Tuesday, 18 August 2026

Hunter Valley Operations wants to keep two open-cut thermal coalmines in New South Wales running into the mid-2040s, with a combined ceiling of 26 million tonnes of coal a year from 2027, according to IEEFA.

Under state guidelines, HVO was permitted to count just 0.33% of the emissions the project will generate in NSW when it prepared its cost-benefit analysis, IEEFA said.

The extension would lift the mines' emissions to 15.3Mt of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), IEEFA said, with almost 60% of that total tied to an estimated 3.2 billion litres of diesel burned over the life of the mines. Diesel-fuelled haulage and excavation therefore dominate the project's on-site emissions profile rather than the coal handling itself.

The application went before public hearings held by the NSW Independent Planning Commission (IPC) last month and has drawn more than 8,000 submissions, split two-thirds in favour and one-third against, according to IEEFA.

IEEFA also said HVO has no exit strategy for the two mines, which employ 1,500 people. That leaves the closure horizon and the workforce transition unresolved while the proponent seeks approval to mine for roughly two more decades.

The extraction limit and the mid-2040s end date set the scale of the decision facing the IPC: a single approval covering two open-cut operations at a fixed annual maximum from 2027 onward.

The California Energy Commission voted unanimously on Monday to approve a rule that phases in the nation's first efficiency standards for tires, Grist reported.

Compliance arrives on two dates. Under the regulation, an initial standard aimed at the least efficient tires applies from 2029, and a tighter threshold follows in 2033.

Commission chair David Hochschild said the rule will save Californians roughly USD 1 billion a year on refueling.

The state also expects an air-quality dividend. Its projection puts the annual reduction at 2 million tons of carbon dioxide, a volume the state likens to removing around 400,000 cars from the road.

Commission arithmetic sets the price premium for a more efficient set of tires at USD 6 to USD 26. Lower fuel use covers that gap and then some: the commission put lifetime net savings per tire at USD 85 to USD 153, assuming gasoline at USD 4.60 a gallon.

Shoppers get a leaf rating at the point of sale. The scale rises with efficiency, and four leaves marks the top tier.

Australia's Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme (SRES) will raise its small-scale technology certificate eligibility cap tenfold from October 1, lifting the threshold from 100 kW to 1 MW, according to RenewEconomy.

The change widens the pool of commercial and industrial solar systems that can claim upfront certificate value under the federal scheme. Systems that previously sat above the 100 kW ceiling will fall inside the 1 MW cap once the new threshold takes effect.

A second measure lands earlier. RenewEconomy reported that the NSW Peak Demand Reduction Scheme expands to cover commercial-scale batteries from September 1, with upfront discounts available for batteries with capacity up to 30 MWh.

The two announcements arrived within a fortnight of each other and have, per RenewEconomy, transformed the economics for commercial solar and battery projects in Australia.

The battery discount ceiling of 30 MWh sits far above typical behind-the-meter storage sizing, opening the scheme to substantially larger commercial installations than a residential-oriented rebate would reach.

The California legislature advanced four clean energy bills to floor votes and held a smart meter data access bill in committee, PV Magazine reported.

One of the surviving measures, Senate Bill 868 from Senator Scott Wiener, clears regulatory hurdles for plug-in balcony solar systems up to 1,200 W. Plug-in units of that size sit at the small end of the distributed solar market and have faced permitting and interconnection friction that the bill targets directly.

Assembly Bill 1813 cleared the Senate Appropriations Committee. It directs regulators to value community solar and storage using the Avoided Cost Calculator maintained by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). Tying compensation to that calculator replaces bespoke program pricing with the same avoided-cost methodology the CPUC already applies elsewhere, and it sets the economics for community solar projects that have struggled to reach financial close in the state.

Senate Bill 913, authored by Sen. Josh Becker, requires the CPUC to establish a valuation framework for behind-the-meter battery storage systems that export energy to the grid during peak stress. That places a compensation obligation on the regulator rather than leaving export value to utility tariff design, and it applies to residential and commercial batteries already installed behind customer meters.

The casualty was Assembly Bill 1787, which failed to pass out of the Senate Appropriations Committee. The bill would have required utilities to provide real-time smart meter data access to consumers. Real-time interval data is the input layer for virtual power plant dispatch and for third-party load management products, so its failure leaves the aggregation bills advancing without the customer-side data mandate that would have supported them.

The package moves against a backdrop of California electricity rates doubling over the past decade. Rate pressure is the political fuel behind measures that let customers self-supply or sell power back, and it also frames the counterargument utilities and ratepayer advocates raise about cost shifts between participating and non-participating customers.

The Avoided Cost Calculator referenced in AB 1813 is the CPUC's standing tool for pricing distributed resources against what the grid would otherwise spend on generation, capacity, and transmission. Applying it to community solar and storage means project revenue tracks a regulatory model rather than a legislated fixed rate, which shifts the negotiation from the statehouse to the commission's periodic updates of that model.

SB 913 and AB 1813 both hand implementation to the CPUC. Neither bill sets the numbers itself. The commission proceedings that follow will determine whether behind-the-meter export payments and community solar values are high enough to move projects, and that is where the substance of the legislative session will land.

Balcony solar, by contrast, is a permitting question rather than a compensation one. SB 868 addresses the regulatory barriers to plug-in systems at or below 1,200 W, a category aimed at renters and apartment residents who cannot install roof-mounted arrays. The bill does not create a payment mechanism for those systems.

All four surviving bills still require floor votes.

The U.S. Interior Department has put forward a sale of deep-sea mining leases in U.S. waters around the Northern Mariana Islands, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

Under the plan from the Marine Minerals Administration, the auction area totals about 67 million acres, spread across seabed on both the eastern and western flanks of the U.S. Pacific territory.

Minerals access for supply chains and manufacturing is the stated purpose. Acting MMA Director Matt Giacona said in a statement the proposal is meant to support U.S. access to minerals "needed for supply chains, manufacturing and national security".

A similar step came last month, when the Trump administration proposed leasing more than 31 million acres of seabed off American Samoa for deep-sea mining, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

South Africa's Cabinet approved the Revised Electricity Pricing Policy for public comment last month, SAnews reported. Under the policy, NERSA, the country's electricity regulator, will be required to publish a 10-year electricity price forecast.

Minister Ramokgopa said electricity tariffs have increased by about 977% over a period stretching back to 2007, according to SAnews.

Part of that bill covers debt Eskom never collects. Between 1% and 2.5% of the current tariff reflects the utility's inability to recover what consumers owe, Ramokgopa said.

The document replaces the 2008 Electricity Pricing Policy. SAnews reported that it accounts for developments in the electricity supply industry, including market reforms tied to the unbundling of Eskom and the implementation of the Electricity Regulation Amendment Act, 2024.

A published forecast horizon of a decade would give industrial buyers and municipalities a longer view of regulated price paths than the current annual determination cycle offers.

Benchmark oil prices topped USD 90 a barrel as investors worried that efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz were making little headway, according to Semafor.

The move came alongside a broader repricing in fixed income and equities. Semafor reported that government bond yields rose to multiyear highs and stock markets fell, on growing concern that tensions involving Iran are unlikely to resolve in the near future.

The strain is clearest at the long end of sovereign curves. French and German long-dated yields are at their highest since 2008 and 2011 respectively, while Japanese long-dated yields are closing in on an all-time record, according to Semafor.

The reporting ties the crude move directly to transit risk rather than to a supply outage, with the stalled reopening effort cited as the trigger for investor unease.

Sanctions and a naval blockade already in place have "crippled Iran's economy," an administration official said, according to Semafor.

Semafor reported that options under consideration for tightening Iran's economic isolation include seizing Iranian assets and imposing sanctions on the country's trading partners, on exchange houses, and on Chinese banks. Each of those measures carries potential downsides, according to the report.

The official's argument, as relayed by Semafor, sets the existing sanctions regime and the blockade against the case for further escalation.