Publications

Monash Lens brings you expert commentary and stories by leading Monash University academics and researchers who are helping to change the world.

PODCAST | Power To The People - What Happens Next? podcast exploring renewables, part three
In this, the last episode for series two of What Happens Next? we’re talking practical steps for embracing renewable energy in our own lives. Two, Faculty of Engineering experts Behrooz Bahrani and Roger Dargaville join Liam Smith from BehaviourWorks at MSDI to offer up their best tips and advice. They'll explain how you can use your vote, voice and wallet to call for more renewable energy.

PODCAST | Getting the Green Light - What Happens Next? podcast exploring renewables, part two
We're discussing the topic of renewable energy in this episode of the What Happens Next? podcast and how we can solve some of the challenges of getting sustainable energy into the grid.

PODCAST | Power Trip - What Happens Next? podcast exploring renewables, part one
We're discussing the topic of renewable energy in the next three episodes of the What Happens Next? podcast.

COVID-19: The silver lining that could help Australia's battery industry
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a series of rare events distressing almost every industry. However, the shocking economic consequences of COVID-19 and the ever-growing US-China trade war, both considered as "serious" threats to Australia, could bring welcome changes to our battery industry, if we seize the opportunity.

Moving towards zero-emissions transport in a post-COVID-19 Australian economy
The majority of solutions needed to create sustainable, zero-emissions transport for Australia are already known, available today and ready to be rolled out. That's the central finding of a recently released, comprehensive report.

Global report gives Australia an 'A' for coronavirus response, but a 'D' on climate
The global Sustainable Development Report 2020, released this week in New York, ranks Australia third among OECD countries for the effectiveness of its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, beaten by only South Korea and Latvia.

Renovation rescue: Six ways to ensure HomeBuilder helps consumers, the climate and the economy
The federal government’s new HomeBuilder scheme offers eligible Australians money to renovate or build a home. While it’s attracted controversy, HomeBuilder does offer a much-needed opportunity to make old homes more energy-efficient.

COVID, StockTwits, and a maths formula for a volatile stock market
Since COVID-19 stopped the world, the stock market has fluctuated wildly, from despair to hope and back again.

COVID-19: Household electricity and consumer vulnerability in physical isolation
Access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy should be universal. Since COVID-19, ensuring that our energy system meets consumer needs is even more critical.

Turning solar panels that are past their use-by date into renewable opportunities
Australia has certainly demonstrated its appetite for solar power. With the average lifespan of a solar panel being approximately 20 years, many installations from the early 2000s are set to reach the end of their lives imminently.

Fuel for thought: Charting a course towards the ammonia economy
Most people have heard of the hydrogen economy, where renewable electricity creates hydrogen fuel from water – but an ammonia economy is emerging as a more viable possibility.

COVID-19, FIFO workers, and the risk facing remote mining communities
The COVID-19 pandemic has underlined just how much our lives are now mediated by technology.

How the coronavirus fight can help us solve climate change
For just over a century, between the Spanish flu of 1918-19 and COVID-19, millions have lived and died without ever knowing the impacts of a global health pandemic capable of such death and destruction to social organisation as we're seeing now.

Microalgae, and future food for thought
They’re responsible for more than 75 per cent of the Earth’s oxygen supply, but often get no credit for it.

One overarching ask for business and investors: Do you have a plan to achieve zero emissions?
According to the most recent survey by global accounting firm PwC, some 65 per cent of CEOs worry about climate change.

Batteries made with sulphur could be cheaper, greener and hold more energy
Lithium-ion batteries have changed the world. Without the ability to store meaningful amounts of energy in a rechargeable, portable format we would have no smartphones or other personal electronic devices.

Waste not, want not: a home-grown plan to turn plastic and tyres into fuel
Reduce, reuse, recycle. Like brushing your teeth after a meal, recycling is just the right thing to do.

Autonomous cars are the future of transport? Don't believe the hype
Public transport is the beating heart of a successful and liveable city, and will be for a long time to come, likely forever. If you don’t believe that, let me sell you a fleet of autonomous cars now.

A commitment to a sustainable future
The session on sustainable development at the 2018 Monash Global Leaders’ Summit kicked off with a question: how many people think about sustainability when they’re devising strategy, thinking about threats or looking for opportunities?

Baffled by baseload? Dumbfounded by dispatchables?
Australia’s energy market is a prominent fixture in our daily news cycle. Amid the endless ideology and politics swirling around the sector, technical terms such as “baseload power” and “dispatchable generation” are thrown around so often that there is a danger the meaning of these terms can get lost in the public debate.

Forging frontiers in a material world
The future of materials engineering has a Monash University address. Housed in the Clayton campus’ New Horizons building, the Woodside Innovation Centre, part of the Woodside FutureLab network, is the result of the largest corporate philanthropic gift in Monash history.

The business of energy
Despite the absence of clear climate or energy policy over the past 10 years, the Australian energy market has experienced a series of transformational disruptions that have fundamentally changed its nature.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning
Predictive data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and automated decision-making (ADM) are gradually, almost unnoticed, entering the vocabularies of our news, and becoming part of our everyday lives.

FLEET collaboration: creating electronics that run on near zero energy
Cheaper, faster, smarter, smaller – the ever-evolving digital world has changed the way we live, as predicted by the law Gordon Moore outlined in 1965.

Is our future sustainable?
As the planet’s resources continue to diminish, we must look to research, innovation and collaboration to deliver a sustainable world for future generations.

Liquid salts creating sustainable fuel and preserving our coral reefs
When Monash chemistry Professor Doug MacFarlane was a PhD student at Purdue University in Indiana, he worked on “liquid salts” for use in preserving living tissue – including human kidneys and marine corals.

Should Australia be investing in nuclear energy?
The Australian government is launching an inquiry into the possibility of building a nuclear power industry in Australia.

The Monash researcher who devised a virtual currency
In 2004, before the invention of bitcoin, Joseph Liu wrote his PhD thesis on how to secure the anonymity of people who were buying and selling goods on the internet, using some cryptographic algorithms.

Perovskites and power: moving to new generation of sustainable solar energy
When Jacek Jasieniak looks at a city skyline, he sees more than tall buildings of glass – he sees windows of opportunity.

Can blockchain transform the energy industry?
If you’ve heard of blockchain technology, but don’t really get it, you’re not alone. And breaking it down into blocks and chains won’t help.

Electrolysis breakthrough could solve the hydrogen conundrum
Hydrogen gas is the perfect green fuel – it can be extracted from water and is non-polluting. But although hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, it doesn’t naturally occur in large quantities as a gas on Earth.

Australia's biggest property companies are making net-zero emissions pledges – now we can track them
Corporate Australia is taking action on climate change. Most recently, at the UN Climate Summit, Atlassian cofounder Michael Cannon-Brookes announced the A$26 billion Australian software company’s commitment to net zero emissions by 2050.

World-class drone infrastructure to support research
Universities and research organisations across Australia use drones to gather vital data on everything from agricultural crop health to infrastructure assessment and management.

Australia's energy policy is at a crossroads
According to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, residential consumers faced a real increase of 35 per cent on their bills in the decade to 2017–18.

Rethinking biofuels: the future of energy
The golden age for biofuel research and investment in Australia was between 2007 and 2014 when the oil price soared to over US$100 a barrel. Suddenly, the world was looking more closely at alternative fuels.