Author: Antriksh Dhand

Highlights from the Australian market

• The federal and NSW governments will split $2.5 billion to keep the Tomago aluminium smelter running in return for 100% renewable supply from 2033 and $1.1 billion of Rio’s own investment.
• Energy ministers have backed all 14 recommendations of the Ray review into AEMO’s governance, agreeing to divest AusEnergy Services Limited and shift AEMO to full government membership while leaving the ISP untouched.
• Chris Bowen has warned states they may toughen the federal data centre rules but not water them down, while the AEMC has told ministers data centres should bring their own clean, firm energy.
• The CER has confirmed the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme will expand to solar systems up to 1 MW, ten times the current cap and aimed at the stalled commercial-and-industrial “missing middle”.
• South Australia has announced a nation-first royal commission into artificial intelligence, a ~$3 million inquiry prompted partly by data centre proposals at Tailem Bend but focused mainly on work and labour.
• Electric vehicles took 21.7% of Australia’s new-car market in July, a second straight month above 20%, with BYD’s 5,116 deliveries beating Tesla’s record July result.

News from Japan

• Paywalled: Kansai Electric’s 1.18 GW Oi Unit 3 tripped automatically on Saturday 8 August after a loss-of-field alarm on the generator and remains offline with no restart date.
• Paywalled: Japan’s supplementary T-1 capacity auction for FY2027 cleared every bid yet still missed its target for the first time, securing 4.58 GW at ¥10,361/kW and leaving Hokkaido short with no new entrants able to close the gap.

Podcast of the week

Zugzwang: The Market Modelling Podcast. The energy sector has been asking for this. Zugzwang is Endgame Analytics’ new podcast digging into market modelling, from Oliver Nunn and Jack Simpson.

The name comes from chess, a position where any move you make leaves you worse off. It’s hard to pronounce and a little pretentious, and that’s exactly the point.

Episodes launching next week. Subscribe and listen to the teaser here: https://open.spotify.com/show/0346ILtbXgKJJIlOy64p1i?si=77a682128e1c4836

Highlights from the Australian market

• NEM wholesale prices averaged $74/MWh in Q2 2026, a six-year low and 47% below Q2 2025, as renewables hit a record 42.1% of generation.
• EVs now make up almost a quarter of Australia’s new car sales as the Middle East fuel crisis bites, with battery electrics and plug-in hybrids together taking a record 35.8% of new passenger car sales in June and the Tesla Model Y outselling the HiLux for a second month straight.
• Energy ministers agreed to legislate national standards requiring large data centres to underwrite new renewable supply, but Queensland and the Northern Territory opposed the package with the NT instead backing a $40 billion gas-fired data centre industry drawing on Beetaloo gas.
• The Balance Sheet’s Issue No. 13 audit of Australia’s energy economy finds the country exports about three times the energy it consumes and will earn $405 billion doing it this year; yet, household electricity prices have drifted from among the world’s cheapest two decades ago to around the OECD average today.
• The Albanese and Cook governments have put $4 million into a pre-feasibility study for the first large-scale petrol refinery since the 1960s, but experts have called it “dinosaur technology” given the clean energy transition and structurally falling petrol demand.

News from Japan

• The M7.1 Kumamoto earthquake on 28 July cut power to about 32,000 households in Kumamoto Prefecture at its peak, with around 14,000 still off supply two days later; gas supply remains suspended in parts of the prefecture, mobile generator vehicles have been deployed to run air conditioning at evacuation centres in 35°C heat, and the Sendai nuclear plant about 100 km from the epicentre reported no abnormalities.
• Paywalled: Invenergy has shelved its planned 47.3 MW onshore wind project near Hakodate in Hokkaido three months after announcing it, after residents objected over soil erosion, water contamination and low-frequency noise. An online petition drew more than 30,000 signatures ending an 11-turbine project that was to begin construction in 2031 and reach commercial operation by 2035.

Podcast of the week: Catalyst’s Shayle Kann on the commercial battery comeback – why C&I storage has been the missing middle, and what’s finally shifting the economics.

Highlights from the Australian market

• Australia connected a record 9.1GW of new solar, wind and battery capacity to full output in FY26 – more than double FY25 – per AEMO’s latest connections scorecard, with battery projects accounting for 52% of total capacity.
• Origin Energy has confirmed unauthorised access to customer data potentially affecting millions of its accounts, with the hacker reportedly obtaining names, addresses, emails, dates of birth and bill history.
• The SA government has admitted its own energy reliability scheme is adding to power bills.
• The NSW Hunter region’s former coal power station sites are being rebuilt as battery and energy hubs, with AGL’s Liddell Battery nearing start-up and the 850MW Waratah Super Battery already operating.
• Australia’s small-scale home battery installations fell 28.3% in June to 1.07GWh, down from a record 2.43GWh in April, as the May 1 changes to the Cheaper Home Batteries Program tightened subsidy rules.
• Construction has begun on Neoen’s 179MW Narrogin Wind Farm in WA’s Wheatbelt, creating 250 jobs and enough power for almost 100,000 homes once complete in late 2028.

Podcast of the week: Bloomberg’s Switched On discusses data centre developers turning to on-site gas turbines to bring AI data centres online faster than grid connections allow.

Highlights from the Australian market:

• PM Anthony Albanese has launched a new Office of AI to design new national AI standards, including a legal obligation for large-scale data centres to become net-generators of renewable energy.
• CSIRO’s final GenCost 2025-26 report finds a four-hour battery is now cheaper to build than a gas peaking plant, as gas turbine costs are pushed up partly by US data centres’ demand for turbines.
• The same GenCost report also finds that the Coalition and One Nation’s plan to ditch net zero will not lead to lower power prices; instead, renewables-plus-storage remains the lowest-cost route to net zero.
• The AEMC has made a final rule to improve visibility and planning of the local electricity grid, requiring network businesses to publish more consistent distribution data and a new 20-year Distribution Network Development Plan as rooftop solar, EVs and nearly half a million newly-installed home batteries reshape the low-voltage grid.
• Paywalled: Tesla and several NSW councils have warned the AEMC that letting network companies such as Ausgrid, Endeavour Energy and Essential Energy own pole-mounted EV chargers under the government’s $40 million charger rollout program could backfire, deterring competition and private investment in faster charging.

Some news from Japan:

• Japan Nuclear Fuel Limited’s Rokkasho-mura reprocessing plant in Aomori Prefecture looks set for a 28th delay, after the Nuclear Regulation Authority ordered that nuclear waste material currently on-site be processed and removed before completion, rather than afterward as originally planned.
• Japan’s eight major regional power companies plan to upgrade or build 30 substations nationwide by the early 2030s, adding over 15 GW of grid capacity to meet AI-driven data centre demand.

Podcast of the week: Let Me Sum Up dives into the 2026 Integrated System Plan and a new energy governance report.