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.