Industry: Energy

Highlights from the Australian market

• Anthropic has signed a lease for Australia’s largest data centre, the $32 billion Western Downs Digital Park near Dalby in Queensland, which will power Claude AI inference and, once built, draw electricity equivalent to 1.5 million households.
• Australia’s dependence on gas generation during the evening peak has fallen by almost 70% in the year to August 2026, with batteries now covering 49% of evening dispatchable power, up from just 0.4% in 2020.
• In the same vein, new ANU modelling finds Australia doesn’t need more gas-fired generation to meet future energy needs, showing pumped hydro and batteries can balance a fully renewable grid at a comparable cost.
• NSW’s renewable transmission delivery agency EnergyCo has underspent its budget by $939 million over the past two years, a symptom of approval delays that now leave the state roughly 7.9GW short of its 2030 renewable energy target.
• ARENA has committed $8.2 million to a home electrification trial that aims to make the transition from gas to electricity easier, letting up to 1,000 Canberra households bundle solar, batteries and EVs onto one digital platform.
• IEEFA and Green Energy Markets’ Australian Renewable Energy Scorecard finds Australia has enough wind and solar in the pipeline – 34GW of solar and 17GW of wind fully approved – to hit the 82% 2030 renewables target, but actual construction is falling far short.  

News from Japan

• Chubu Electric Power has withdrawn its restart applications for Hamaoka Units 3 and 4 after an independent committee found staff had for years manipulated seismic safety data submitted to Japan’s nuclear regulator, leaving it unclear if or when the reactors will ever restart.

Podcast of the week

Zugzwang: Episode 3 – What is transmission really worth?

The latest episode of Zugzwang: The market modelling podcast is now available!

Jack Simpson, Oliver Nunn and Jabez Wilson discuss modelling philosophy and put it to work on one of the NEM’s most contested assets: transmission. Listen now on your favourite platform.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0346ILtbXgKJJIlOy64p1i

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/zugzwang/id6801348317

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ3gvq2Ccils

Highlights from the Australian market

• The Albanese Government has softened its east coast gas reservation policy, replacing a fixed 20% mandatory reservation on LNG exporters with a cap of up to 20% determined by the Australian Energy Regulator.
• Natural gas production has begun in the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin – a milestone eight years in the making since the NT’s fracking moratorium was lifted in 2018 – with the NT government anticipating up to $17 billion in economic value from the project over the next two decades.
• Something closer to home: Sydney’s International Convention Centre is being fitted with roughly 4,500 new rooftop solar panels, creating the largest solar farm in any city centre in the Southern Hemisphere and cutting the venue’s carbon emissions by up to 2,000 tonnes a year.
• Transgrid’s newly released 2026 Transmission Annual Planning Report shows NSW data centre demand forecasts have quadrupled since last year’s report, with data centres now expected to reach around 3.5GW of peak demand by 2035 and drive 66% of all growth in the state’s end-use electricity consumption over the next decade.
• Transgrid has also effectively put up a “house full” sign for new data centres in Sydney, revealing it has received 20GW of connection requests over two years but signed just 1.5GW, and is now steering data centre owners toward regional NSW until major transmission upgrades complete around 2035.    

News from Japan

• Australia’s ambassador to Japan, Andrew Shearer, used a Japan National Press Club address to call for deeper Australia-Japan energy cooperation, framing the push partly around concerns over China’s growing economic coercion in the region.
• Paywalled: Chugoku Electric Power’s Shimane Nuclear Power Station Unit 3  – a 1.37GW reactor that began construction in 2006 but was halted after Fukushima in 2011 – is on track to clear safety inspections and become the first new nuclear unit to come online in Japan, with operation expected by FY2030.
• Paywalled: Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Germany’s RWE are installing a 30 MW-class hydrogen mono-firing gas turbine in northern Germany, capable of running on 100% hydrogen or co-firing with LNG at various ratios, with the trial run set to begin within FY2026.

Podcast of the week

Catalyst with Shayle Kann asks whether data centers actually increase electricity prices; the answer is more nuanced than it first appears, with data centres able to lower local utility rates even as they contribute to rising grid costs elsewhere.

Highlights from the Australian market

• A fire has completely destroyed Tungatinah Power Station in Tasmania’s Central Highlands; Hydro Tasmania and TasNetworks remain confident the wider grid remains secure with the gas-fired Tamar Valley Power Station coming online to cover the shortfall.
• WA’s Economic Regulation Authority has fined state-owned Synergy $1.2 million after a trading software error let it inflate wholesale prices from its Kwinana battery, extracting an extra $850,000 and lifting overall wholesale costs by roughly $9.5 million over an eight-month period.
• AEMO and SA Power Networks ran their annual rooftop-solar “fire drill for the grid,” remotely curtailing tens of thousands of South Australian solar systems for up to an hour to test the emergency backstop system.
• The AER has released a preliminary position rejecting Transgrid’s bid to pass an extra $1.2 billion of Project EnergyConnect cost blowouts onto consumers.
• Victoria has launched Australia’s first offshore wind auction, seeking 2GW of capacity in the Gippsland zone with bids closing in August 2027, as the state races to replace coal capacity ahead of Yallourn’s 2028 and Eraring’s 2029 closures.    

News from Japan

• Japan’s industry ministry has asked Hitachiomiya City, near Tokyo, to accept a two-year literature survey on hosting the country’s final high-level nuclear waste repository, only the second time the central government has proactively requested a site rather than waiting for a local volunteer.

Podcast of the week

The latest episode of Zugzwang: The market modelling podcast is now available! In this episode Jack Simpson, Oliver Nunn and Endgame consultant, Harry McArthur break down our latest modelling on where data centres should be located – and what it means for prices, gas, and the coal fleet along the way. Listen now on your favourite platform.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0346ILtbXgKJJIlOy64p1i 

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/zugzwang/id6801348317 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ3gvq2Ccils

Highlights from the Australian market

• AEMO’s 2026 Electricity Statement of Opportunities shows an improved reliability outlook with gaps not emerging until 2030-31 in NSW and Victoria under the official standard; WattClarity questions whether that improvement is partly an artefact of a contested 2023 methodology change adding 6-12 month buffers before new projects count toward the forecast.
• Chris Bowen has launched Capacity Investment Scheme Tender 11, seeking 1.8GW of wind and solar in WA to help replace coal plants closing by 2029. In spite of this, recent analysis from the ABC shows that only 4 of 31 Capacity Investment Scheme-backed wind projects reaching financial close as construction costs have risen 30-50% since bids were submitted.
• The AER has released its Strategic Plan 2026-2030 with concrete commitments including implementing an effective domestic gas reservation scheme and driving more efficient utilisation of electricity distribution networks.
• National cabinet has resolved that Queensland and the Northern Territory can power new data centres with coal and gas rather than exclusively new renewables, a carve-out from the Albanese Government’s original push for a uniform national standard, with federal legislation now not expected until 2027.
• Victoria has opened its first offshore wind auction, seeking 2GW of capacity across Gippsland and Warrnambool zones (enough for 1.5 million homes), with bids closing August 2027, contracts awarded in 2028, and first power expected in 2035.
• The Australian Renewable Energy Hub has shrunk from a planned 26GW to 15GW, with proponents InterContinental Energy and CWP Global dropping the hydrogen and ammonia export components entirely.
• Oxford Economics forecasts Australian data centre electricity demand will more than triple from 5.1TWh in FY26 to 33.7TWh by FY36 under its central scenario, with NSW and Victoria accounting for over 85% of that load and data centres consuming up to 19% of those states’ grid-supplied electricity by then.

News from Japan

• Paywalled: Kirin has begun producing green hydrogen on-site at one of its beer factories using a 280kW solar array, targeting 70-80 tonnes of hydrogen annually to cover up to 23% of the plant’s heating needs.
• Paywalled: Japan’s grid operator OCCTO has proposed a new “Complementary Auction” within its Capacity Market, run alongside the existing Reserve Power auction, both effectively paying older thermal plants to stay online amid concerns that supply will remain tight through FY2030.

Podcast of the week

Catalyst with Shayle Kann talks to Voya Energy’s Richard Wang about replacing diesel backup generators with an electrochemical generator that produces electricity from aluminium pellets and air.

Highlights from the Australian market

• The Victorian Coalition promised to scrap the VNI West transmission project if it wins November’s election, citing a $7.6–11.4bn cost and proposing gas reserves and urban solar parks instead.
• NSW became the first state to put hard numbers on data centre connections, releasing its NSW Data Centre Guidelines alongside a fast-track planning pathway for compliant projects.
• With the ESOO 2026 imminent, WattClarity revisited the CIS-awarded project pipeline to check how much awarded capacity is actually on track to be delivered.
• The AER found that batteries — now 6.1 GW across the NEM, up from 261 MW five years ago — are splitting “one market into many”, easing wholesale price pressure but leaving evening and overnight prices well above pre-2022 levels.
• On the other side of that ledger, BloombergNEF reported that realised battery arbitrage spreads on the NEM fell 84% in Q2 2026 as the grid-scale fleet expanded and competition compressed the spread.
• Energy Policy WA opened consultation in its Power System Security and Reliability Standards Review, reconsidering the security and reliability standards that govern the SWIS.
• NSW will cut battery costs by 20–40% for businesses and apartment buildings from 1 September, for systems from 20 kWh to 30 MWh and stackable with the federal rebate.
• Origin’s grid-forming 650 MWh Mortlake battery entered commercial operation in western Victoria, while Ausgrid started construction on the 200 MW/400 MWh Steel River East BESS in Newcastle and won approval for a second 400 MWh project at Homebush.
• APA Group took FID on a $259m, 72 MW solar farm plus 52 MW/104 MWh battery at Mount Isa, contracted to Evolution Mining out to 2046, and Windlab and Squadron referred their 500 MW solar / 500 MW storage Bungaban project for federal assessment.

News from Japan

• Itochu (major Japanese trading firm) will be entering the data centre business and aims to develop up to 10 data centres by 2030: 伊藤忠がデータセンター参入 数千億円投じ10棟開発、JR東と協業視野 Each site will be ~50 MW in size, and the investment capital for the 10 data centres to be developed is estimated to be several-hundred billion yen (several billion AUD). As data centres require large plots of land, Itochu is planning on partnering w/ JR East (major train company) which holds strategic lots of land across the Greater Tokyo and Eastern Japan.
• JAPEX (major Japanese petroleum exploration firm) is now driving a 2nd pile underground to conduct geological survey for potential CO2 sequestration in Tomakomai City, Hokkaido: 石油資源開発、CO2地下貯留に向け試掘2坑目 北海道苫小牧で
• Tomakomai has Japan’s largest industrial area aptly called Tomatoh (“eastern Tomakomai”), where various trials are being conducted such as CCS / CO2 sequestration and hydrogen/ammonia co-firing, alongside existing thermal power plants: 日本最大の産業地域「苫東」：TOMATOH―苫小牧東部地域 産業用地―
• Kansai EPCO says that at its Oi nuclear plant Unit 3 (1.18 GW), which has been shut down since last week due to the loss of magnetic field generation for the turbine, a part called a “diode module” broke apart, most likely due to wear-and-tear: 停止中の大飯原発3号機、部品に損傷 異常警報で関西電力が調査 The diode module was installed in 1991 and hasn’t been replaced since then (so it was over 35 years old).
• Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (“MAFF”) is proposing new legislation for agrivoltaics to have a max shading rate of 30%: Japan’s proposed shading rate for agrivoltaics is unreasonable, says think tank Public comments are to be submitted by 22nd Aug, w/ the proposed legislation to be implemented from Sep-end onward. Developers as well as think tanks such as the Renewable Energy Institute (“REI”; for some reason in the English article they call it the Renewable Energy Foundation) have voiced concerns that implementing a “non-scientific” arbitrary threshold of 30% for the shading rate would be detrimental for the agrivoltaics industry.

Podcast of the week

In the debut episode of Zugzwang, Oliver and Jack tackle the perception that market modelling is an impenetrable black box and start pulling it apart. 

Listen now on your favourite podcast platform:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0346ILtbXgKJJIlOy64p1i

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/zugzwang/id6801348317

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ3gvq2Ccils

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.

In this Weekly Dispatch:

1. South Australia experienced its worst wind drought in seven years, with prices hitting the market price cap twice and gas surging from under 5% to more than 50% of generation.
2. Firmus has signed a 12-year, 600 MW wholesale energy supply deal with commodities trader Gunvor to power its planned South Australian AI Factory campuses, with Gunvor backing 1.2 GW of new renewable generation and 1.5 GWh of battery storage by 2032.
3. WA has launched consultation on its Future Energy System Outlook (FESO), a scenarios-based study out to 2050 for the South West Interconnected System.
4. The Australian Energy Regulator has formally separated from the ACCC to become a standalone Commonwealth entity from 1 July, gaining direct control of its own staffing and corporate services while its regulatory functions and independence remain unchanged.
5. South32 has agreed to sell its aluminium value chain (including Worsley Alumina in WA, Hillside Aluminium in South Africa and three Brazilian assets) to Alcoa for up to US$5.6 billion, as it refocuses on copper, zinc, silver, lead and manganese.
6. None of China’s major battery makers have yet received Japan’s JC-STAR cybersecurity certification, which will be required for grid-connected BESS and solar/wind equipment from FY2027, fuelling concerns the scheme is a de facto China-exclusion tactic.
7. TEPCO has confirmed its total ¥100 billion (~AUD 900 million) community payout to Niigata Prefecture tied to the restart of its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Unit 6 (1.36 GW).
8. Podcast of the week: Bloomberg’s Switched On — “Battery Boom Is Upending Australian Power Market Rules”, on how Australia’s battery boom is eroding the arbitrage returns that drove its early growth.