Monday, 17 August 2026

The Coalition in Victoria, Australia, has said it may keep ageing coal-fired power stations in operation, according to RenewEconomy.

RenewEconomy also reported that the Coalition will scrap plans to move away from gas.

The position covers two separate parts of the state's fuel mix at once: the operating life of existing coal generation, and the policy track directing consumption away from gas. In its own words, as reported by RenewEconomy, the Coalition says it may keep "old coal clunkers" running.

MOBY Robotics, a Miami-based startup founded in 2025, is pursuing subsea mineral discovery and recovery with fleets of autonomous robots rather than the large remotely operated vehicles and riser systems that have defined deep-sea mining hardware, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

The company's thesis, as reported by Offshore Engineer OEDigital, is that the sector's future does not depend on ever-larger ROVs and massive riser systems. In their place, MOBY is betting on AI-enabled robots that work cooperatively on the seafloor.

Two modular platforms carry that approach. NEMO is an autonomous underwater vehicle built for mapping, survey and persistent underwater monitoring. SCOOBEE is an autonomous seafloor crawler that can be configured for tasks ranging from inspection to mineral collection, with integrated marine life detection and avoidance systems, per the same account.

The firm's leadership brings classification-society experience to the venture. Andrew Lipman, MOBY's chief operating officer, served as a U.S. Marine Corps infantry officer and then spent 17 years with the American Bureau of Shipping, most recently as Director of Subsea and Mining Operations based in Shenzhen, China, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

New Zealand's government has agreed to act on 15 recommendations from a sector review of small- and medium-sized solar installations, according to pv magazine. The package includes legalizing plug-in solar, next-working-day approval for systems under 10 kW, and sign-off by accredited installers, without an inspection, for installations below 100 kW.

The cost effect is the sharpest part of the reform. Analysis previously released by the Ministry for Regulation found that implementing the report's recommendations would cut average approval for a residential solar system from around NZD 640 and three months to NZD 200 and six days, pv magazine reported.

The ministry put the aggregate gain at between NZD 28 million and NZD 50 million in net benefits over ten years, attributing it to lower compliance costs, fewer delays and the use of plug-in solar.

The consenting changes land on a small installed base. Cumulative solar capacity in New Zealand reached 836 MW at the end of last year, according to figures from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) cited by pv magazine.

Grid-access rules for the same customer segment were reset earlier in the year. New Zealand's electricity authority introduced a 10 kW default export limit for residential solar and battery systems in April, a step intended to standardize grid access. That threshold matches the capacity ceiling now proposed for next-working-day approval.

Utility-scale build is moving in parallel. The country's largest solar farm to date, a 150 MW project on the north island, came online in July, pv magazine reported. That single site is equivalent to a substantial share of the 836 MW counted across the whole market at the end of last year.

The UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) published its accounting officer assessment for the Small Modular Reactor Programme Technology Partner Contract on 17 August 2026. The document was released as transparency data covering the department's major projects.

Accounting officer assessments are mandatory for every project or programme inside the Government's Major Projects Portfolio (GMPP), according to DESNZ. Each is judged against four standards that Parliament and the public expect for the use of public resources: regularity, propriety, value for money, and feasibility.

The DESNZ publication places the small modular reactor technology partner contract inside that same scrutiny framework applied across the GMPP.

Senegal raised fuel prices by 7% to hold down the cost of subsidies, Semafor Net Zero reported. The increase follows a subsidy bill that has already consumed nearly the entire full-year allocation.

According to Semafor Net Zero, the government's spending overshoot came after crude prices climbed past the USD 85 benchmark used to build the subsidy estimate. With the reference price breached, the allocation set aside for the year was drained well before the year closed.

The 7% adjustment at the pump is the government's mechanism for capping that exposure.

Senegal is not alone in passing higher import costs to consumers. Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria and Tanzania are among the African countries where fuel prices have risen, Semafor Net Zero reported.

The underlying vulnerability is import dependence. Africa still buys around 70% of the fuel it consumes from abroad, according to Semafor Net Zero. That share leaves national budgets that fix retail prices directly exposed to movements in international crude, with the gap between the administered price and the landed cost absorbed by the treasury until the allocation is exhausted.