According to The Australian Financial Review, Sekisui House has bought a large development site in Sydney’s Hills District from Aqualand for about $100 million as part of five-year plan to expand its presence in Australia’s largest city.
Executive general manager Craig D’Costa said the elevated 7.8-hectare holding in Norwest, where Sekisui is already active with The Orchards apartment development, will eventually house 150 to 200 mostly detached dwellings.
“We’re considering the best balance of product on the site and are aiming to have a DA lodged later this year,” he said.

https://www.afr.com/property/residential/sekisui-house-in-100m-norwest-buy-reveals-coastal-expansion-plans-20220323-p5a75j

 

According to the media announcement, ENEOS and Toyota have signed a joint agreement to explore CO2-free hydrogen production and usage at Woven City, the prototype city of the future that Toyota has started to develop in Susono City, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. Together with Toyota's subsidiary Woven Planet Holdings, Inc. (Woven Planet), they will accelerate efforts by managing technical logistics.
As described in the Basic Agreement signed in 2021, ENEOS and Toyota have decided to commence construction and operation of a hydrogen refueling station in close proximity to Woven City to produce and supply CO2-free hydrogen to Woven City and Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEVs). Together, they will also research and design an efficient hydrogen supply and demand management system. The ENEOS hydrogen refueling station is scheduled to begin operations before the opening of Woven City in 2024-2025.

https://global.toyota/en/newsroom/corporate/36977466.html

 

According to the media announcement, Marubeni Corporation signed a Cooperation Agreement and a Participation Agreement  with BP Alternative Energy Investments Limited, a 100% subsidiary of BP p.l.c, a leading integrated energy player in the world’s energy markets, to work together to achieve the development of offshore wind opportunities as well as potentially explore other decarbonization projects including hydrogen.
As a first step, Marubeni and BPAEIL have agreed to set up a joint venture in which BPAEIL participates in a 49% stake for selected potential offshore wind business opportunity in Japan.

https://www.marubeni.com/en/news/2022/release/00021.html

 

According to The Australian Financial Review, Australia’s three most populated states will jointly fund the development of a string of hydrogen refuelling stations along the country’s most used highways, as the three state governments look to accelerate the electrification of the transport sector.
Australia has pledged to reach net zero emissions by 2050. But while many sectors are rapidly decarbonising – emissions from the country’s transport sector are proving challenging to abate.

https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/vic-nsw-and-queensland-to-fund-hydrogen-refuelling-stations-build-20220325-p5a81p

 

According to The Asahi Shimbun, amid whiteout conditions, a ground-based search party was able to locate the missing climber in a short period of time by using the Cocoheli radio-based search support service.
Cocoheli subscribers carry a small radio transmitter that can be attached to clothing or a backpack. In the event they go missing in the mountains, search-and-rescue workers, often aboard a helicopter, pick up radio waves to locate them with high accuracy.
With more than 40,000 subscribers across the country, police and fire departments in Tokyo and 34 prefectures have introduced the Cocoheli radio receiver.

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14555289

 

According to The Asahi Shimbun, Japanese pharmaceutical giant Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corp. (MTPC) announced that a COVID-19 vaccine derived from a type of tobacco plant and developed by Medicago Inc., the Osaka-based company’s subsidiary in Canada, had been approved for human use by Ottawa.
The company said it marked the first time in the world for a plant-based vaccine to win such approval. The vaccine is of a type that uses “virus-like particles,” which mimic the structure of a virus. It is made by introducing genes of the virus into leaf cells of Nicotiana genus plants.
MTPC said it is hoping to apply for approval of the vaccine in Japan this summer. 

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14558584

​According to the company’s announcement, the Australian biomass manufacturer, SEFAAS Pty Ltd, is rapidly establishing itself as a major supplier of renewable biomass pellets to the growing Japanese low emission electricity and industrial sectors.
Biomass pellets are a renewable, sustainable, low carbon solid fuel for use in thermal power stations as an alternative to coal. On a per tonne basis, biomass pellets produce around 85% of the energy of coal with less than 5% of the emissions. The SEFAAS biomass pellets will be produced from sustainably sourced forestry waste and through harvesting two major environmental woody weeds.

 

According to The PV magazine, New South Wales company Hysata is on track to commercialise the world’s most efficient electrolyser, capable of producing green hydrogen for less than $2 per kilogram by the ‘mid 2020s,’ it says. Moreover, the company believes it can reach gigawatt scale hydrogen production within a similar timeframe, saying its design is simple and mass manufacturable today.
The company was born out of an electrolysis breakthrough made at the University of Wollongong, south of Sydney, around three years ago. There researchers led by Professor Gerry Swiegers discovered hydrogen could be produced far more efficiently using capillary-fed electrolysis.
This was verified in a paper published today in peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature, which found the capillary-fed electrolyser could produce green hydrogen from water at 98% cell energy efficiency.

https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2022/03/16/australian-electrolyser-invention-enables-green-hydrogen-under-2-kg-by-mid-2020s/

 

According to The Australian Financial Review, faster and more sustainable buildings will help make housing cheaper, but without reforms to planning processes to speed up the supply of new land, Australia’s affordability problem will keep harming the country, industry leaders say.
A surge in single-person households and the return of migration-driven population growth that will leave the country with a 163,400 shortfall of dwellings by 2032 made technology and planning improvements crucial, Mirvac chief executive Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz and Boral CEO Zlatko Todorcevski said.

https://www.afr.com/property/residential/shortfall-of-163-400-dwellings-by-2032-report-20220314-p5a4d9