This is a recent example: Huge 10-hour battery attracts big wad of long distance objections, joins federal green queue (emphasis mine):

The NSW planning application is for 10-hours of storage, possibly to build in added redundancy, or more flexibility, and it turns out that some people who live in Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria and hundreds of kilometres away in other parts of NSW are annoyed.

The project attracted 74 objections, of which just one was truly local, a man who lives 650m down the road from the battery and solar projects developments and was worried about road use, and noise and air quality.

As is now common, most of the objections to the project were anonymous and, apart from the local man’s worries, repeated the same stale, and occasionally unhinged comments that are regularly copy-pasted into the submissions process.

These include concerns about foreign ownership, that “ruin-abulls” (sic) create a fire risk that could release toxic chemicals, and of Chinese Communist Party control of the energy sector.

A group called Save Our Surroundings Redbank Plains, a suburb outside Brisbane, objected on the grounds that it is an “evil, poisonous and treacherous plan that’s designed to rip off Australian people, contaminate our land/water /biodiversity/the public and enable our greatest enemy to control and harm us.”

In NSW, any project that gets more than 50 objections has to be sent to another independent planning committee, even if the objections are conspiracy theory BS from someone 500km away.

Why are cookers from the other side of the country allowed to stall projects like this? NIMBYism is one thing but these drongos are mostly from other states entirely.

Some older examples:

• 815 MW Bullawah wind farm and 718 MWh battery - Out of 84 submissions, 0 within 5km, 39 were from over 100km away including 5 from Queensland and 5 from Victoria.
• Dinawan 1.2 GW wind farm - 89 submissions, 7 within 5km, 64 from more than 100km away.
• Steel River Battery Energy Storage System - 3 submissions in support from people within 50 km of the project, 61 submissions objecting, all further than 50 km from the project, inlcuing 17 from Victoria and 6 from Queensland and 1 from Tasmania..
• Hume North battery - 72 objections, including nine from special interests groups, with 63 of these from people or groups located 100 kms or more away, or interstate. More than half objected to the very idea of replacing fossil fuels with renewables and storage.
• Deniliquin 480 MWh battery - zero objections within 50km, 66 from more than 50 kms away, and 26 from interstate.

That last one goes into some details about the content of the objections too:

Several objectors think the battery is actually a wind farm, and others think it is a solar project.

One is concerned about its impact on the catchment of the Keiwa River, which is 250 kms away, located in another state and on the other side of the Murray River. Maybe they had been encouraged to complain about another project, and forgot to change it for this one.

“Soon, we’ll all be in the dark thanks to delusional Global Boiling cultists!” said one.

It's been in the news here before but didn't see an actual plot or other visual representation.

Data from here (in Norwegian). Chart made with maplotlib/pywaffle.

Why Idle Off Matters

Idling pollutes the air wherever it happens, but near schools and childcare centres it’s especially harmful, because children are right there, walking, playing, and breathing in exhaust at close range.

Children are most at risk:

• Kids’ lungs are still developing, and they breathe more air relative to their body size than adults.
• Short-term exposure to traffic pollution can trigger asthma attacks and respiratory irritation, while repeated exposure can affect lung, heart, and brain development.
• An idling car can produce concentrated pollutants that linger at breathing height — leaving an engine running near a child can be equivalent to smoking a cigarette around them.

I first read about the campaign from this article: “You smell it:” Fumes from idling SUVs queuing at school are killing our children.

The anti-idling project at the Clovelly school started with an audit finding that roughly 50 per cent of cars remain running while waiting. Conducted during temperate autumn months, the findings suggest idling can be habitual rather than a necessity for air conditioners or heaters.

In Australia, air pollution was attributed to 1.3 per cent of the total disease burden and linked to more than 3200 deaths in 2018.

More details from Melbourne University

The data dashboard at the bottom of the page has lots of details including statistics based on regions, fuel/powertrain type, market segment, etc. You can look up individual car models on page 9 and see how their emissions and mass compare to others.

Total distance was "over 20,000km" - for international comparison:

• 20000 kilometers = 12427.4 miles
• A contiguous US (without Alaska or Hawaii) perimeter roadtrip is slightly less at ~12,225 miles
• Driving from the westernmost point of Europe in Portugal to the easternmost point in Russia is about 10,000 km

Intro excerpt:

We set off from Adelaide in winter with a roof pod on our BYD Dolphin, tents, an induction hotplate, and an assortment of charging cables.

Charging experience excerpts:

From keys on wooden spoons to unlock the charger in Cocklebiddy to solar arrays powering EV chargers during the day, the charging is as varied as the experiences at each Roadhouse.

On the remote stretch of road from Derby to Kununurra, as we approached Fitzroy Crossing, twin plumes of bushfire black smoke covered the sky and initial impressions were not very welcoming. Most charging stations were vandalised here, but did still work.

The most challenging part of our journey was through the Northern Territory. There are distances between fast chargers longer than our car’s highway range. After testing out the car in the 130 km/hr speed zone we committed to slowing down and taking in the scenery, camping at Victoria River and charging overnight from the 15A plug.

NSW took the prize as the state which required the most charging apps installed on our phones, which goes to show the proliferation of EV charging providers.

I just saw this "Billyboil" brand "Thermal Cooker" for sale at an energy-efficiency store. Initially I was intrigued by the terrible marketing (what on earth would be a "Non-Thermal Cooker"?) but the concept of using retained heat interests me.

The idea is, you have two pots - an inner one that goes on the stove-top, and an outer one that has extremely high insulation. You heat up the inner one on the stove until it reaches the desired temperature for what you are cooking, then turn off the stove and put the inner pot into the outer one and seal it up. Ideally, the high insulation of the outer one will slow leakage of heat for hours, and so the food in the inner pot can continue to cook from its retained heat with no further energy input required.

That model costs AU$150, and I was thinking that this should be also feasible with other, cheaper containers - you would need to find a pair that complimented each other:

• Inner stockpot with small handles that don't stick out, or better a compact camping pot with folding/removable handles.
• Outer insulator which is large enough to completely enclose the inner pot, made of materials which won't melt or burn when a hot object is put inside, and with insulation effective enough to retain enough heat to keep the food cooking.

Seems like the outer one would be most difficult to find, maybe a large vacuum-insulated metal thermos would work, but it would need to be big enough to contain the inner pot.

Has anyone seen or tried a similar project? I wonder how it would compare to a pressure cooker in terms of input energy required to make what would be 1 or 2 hour stew in a "normal" pot.

Australian households in three states will be promised access to at least three hours a day of free solar power, regardless of whether they have rooftop panels, the federal government has announced.

The “solar sharer” offer will be available to homes with smart meters – which is the majority of homes – in New South Wales, south-east Queensland and South Australia from July next year, with other areas to potentially follow in 2027.

The government said Australians could schedule appliances such as washing machines, dishwashers and air conditioners and charge electric vehicles and household batteries during this time.

More coverage on the ABC: Energy retailers to be directed to offer free power three hours a day

Excerpt:

New research has shown that plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) emit just 19 per cent less CO2 per kilometre on average than petrol and diesel cars in Europe, significantly undermining the claims of carmakers.

According to a new report published by Transport & Environment (T&E), a leading European clean transport and energy advocacy group, PHEVs were shown to emit roughly the same level of emissions as conventional hybrids and combustion vehicles.

A good, recent overview of methods for recycling various commodity plastics, especially alternatives to mechanical recycling (e.g. chemical depolymerization, gasification). The effects on worker health and the environment in general are also considered.

Full Abstract:

In this systematic review, advancements in plastic recycling technologies, including mechanical, thermolysis, chemical and biological methods, are examined. Comparisons among recycling technologies have identified current research trends, including a focus on pretreatment technologies for waste materials and the development of new organic chemistry or biological techniques that enable recycling with minimal energy consumption. Existing environmental and economic studies are also compared. The findings highlight differences in the environmental characteristics of various recycling methods, including their ability to recover plastic resins, carbon footprint, electricity consumption and gas emissions. The comparisons also reveal the challenges associated with these methods: mechanical recycling often encounters economic barriers due to contamination and inefficiencies in sorting and cleaning processes; thermolysis is constrained by high energy demands and operational costs, whereas chemical and biological recycling faces limitations related to scalability and material costs. Additionally, current challenges, emerging research areas and future directions in plastic recycling are discussed. For example, the role of innovative techniques, such as artificial intelligence, in refining recycling processes is emphasized. The importance of incorporating circular economy principles in the integrated sustainable analysis of recycling processes is also highlighted. The innovative contribution of this review is to address both technological developments and their environmental and economic implications. The focus is placed on literature from the past 10 years to ensure coverage of the most recent advancements. Overall, the insights of this review article aim to guide researchers, policymakers and industry stakeholders in improving sustainable management practices for plastic waste.