The New South Wales Government has awarded $6.3 million in clean energy grants through its NSW Environmental Trust, to support emissions reductions in high-emitting or hard-to-abate industries.
Four projects shared in the Round 1 of the $40 million Clean Technology Research and Development grants, the outcomes of which include solar-powered production of e‑kerosene for sustainable aviation fuel and development of copper-based solar modules to cut electricity costs.
State Minister for Energy, Matt Kean, said New South Wales has a track record of developing global clean tech success stories.
“New South Wales has a once in a generation opportunity to export the ideas and creations of our best and brightest to the rest of the world,” Mr Kean said.
“Investing in clean technology not only creates new pathways to reduce emissions across hard to abate parts of our own economy, it creates new markets for our researchers and entrepreneurs to develop and grow their businesses.”
The successful applicants for Round 1 of the grants program include:
- Sundrive Solar received $3 million to further develop their solar cell technology that replaces high-cost silver with copper, which is significantly cheaper
- Hysata received $1.5 million to support development of a new type of simple, cheap and highly efficient water electrolyser that promises to deliver the world’s lowest cost ‘green’ hydrogen which is considered vital to achieving net zero emissions in the global economy
- Southern Green Gas received $1 million to develop a solar powered e‐kerosene production module for Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) for the hard‐to‐abate aviation sector
- Quickstep Technologies received $803,000 to develop a carbon fibre filament winder system in New South Wales to build Type IV hydrogen tanks for ground transportation and aviation applications
Round 2 of the NSW Environmental Trust’s Clean Technology Research and Development grants will open from Monday 31 October 2022, with up to $14 million available for funding. The funding will be available for individual grants of between $400,000 and $3,000,000.
