Coles threatens GetUp with legal action
Feisty social and environmental justice activist GetUp, which pulled that dramatic stunt at Pauline Hanson’s National Press Club speech a few weeks ago is now under attack from Coles and vowing to fight back.
The problem is the supermarket giant’s relationship with Palantir, a company GetUp refers to as “a surveillance company founded by a far-right billionaire that builds tools for militaries, spy agencies and ICE”.
GetUp said in a missive on Tuesday that Coles is fighting to stop GetUp’s advertising campaign by forcing ad companies to pull down unflattering ads relating to the surveillance company and seeking a public apology to all social media and websites.
“All this matters, because Palantir isn’t an ordinary tech supplier,” a GetUp statement said.
“It was built to fuse enormous quantities of personal data into a powerful AI system, and it sells that capability to militaries, intelligence agencies and ICE. Coles knows what millions of Australian households buy, when, where, how often and on whose card. It knows where its workers are, what they are doing, and for how long.”
The organisation said it will be raising funds and seeking support from shareholders participating at the Coles AGM to seek answers on what data Palantir will be touching.
Tradie Health Month
The Australian Physiotherapy Association is leading Tradie Health Month in August, an initiative to remind of the importance of protecting workers’ physical and psychological health. Australian Institute of Health & Safety, which is supporting the initiative, said on average, 31 construction workers in Australia lose their lives at work each year. As of July 2026, there have already been seven fatalities.
AIHS chief executive Julia Whitford said serious injuries and fatalities could be prevented through better planning, communication, and a stronger safety culture.
IEEFA drops new briefing
The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) has released notes from its briefing examining the growth of distributed energy resources (DER).
In Australia, solar panels are now installed on 40 per cent of homes, thanks to early support from feed in tariffs and government rebates. This helped grow rooftop solar from near zero to 13 per cent of the total electricity generation in the national electricity market between 2014 and 2025, while coal’s share declined from 75 per cent to 52 per cent. The nation is also experiencing a boom in residential batteries, with almost 10 gigawatt-hour capacity installed less than a year since federal rebates were introduced.
In Bangladesh, rooftop solar is growing faster than other DERs. Unlike government data, which reports 415.9 megawatts (MW) of total rooftop solar capacity, IEEFA finds the country’s capacity may have already reached 667 MW, and with small units below 0.15MW included, would actually have reached 1000 MW. This can be seen in the slight decline in power demand during the day, comparing the same period in 2024 to 2026.
In India, DER growth, particularly solar, has been driven by government-led schemes. Subsidies, policies and easier financing have led to growing rooftop solar and agricultural solarisation, increasing distributed solar capacity from 1.8 GW in the 2018 financial year to 31.5 GW in FY26.
CEFC ups the ante on SME energy efficiency
The Clean Energy Finance Corporation is committing another $150 million to expand access to ANZ Bank’s small to medium enterprise discounts for energy efficiency technology.
The corporation and the bank each annually contribute 0.4 per cent towards a total discount of 0.8 per cent, which can be used to reduce total repayment costs and improve cash flow over the life of the asset, supporting decisions that would otherwise be deferred. Technology eligible for the discount includes electric vehicles, rooftop solar, batteries, energy-efficient technology and recycling equipment, helping businesses reduce operating costs while improving energy performance.
The commitment expands on a CEFC and ANZ co-financing program, which has already helped more than 1600 Australian businesses with more than $444 million in discounted asset finance. The organisation said it provided more than $90 million in finance in the last financial year alone to customers through the program.
Jobs
Energy-efficient home design firm reimagined habitat has appointed Simone Schenkel as its CEO and co-owner, in a move to free up founder Michael Drage to work on its prefab sister company Net Zero Plus as well as his co-founded venture Uncommon Living.
Drage will remain a director and co-owner of the design firm, while CEO at Net Zero Plus and another sister company, an energy efficient building advisory, Efficient Habitat.
Schenkel, who joined the studio as principal designer in 2024 with a transition plan, will also extend the reach from its Canberra-based studio into Melbourne, where she resides, as the firm takes on more nationwide projects.
Interesting to see former Clean Energy Council boss Kane Thornton spruik energy and water intensive data centres in his new job as head of strategic impact with data centre provider CDC. This has come via series of social media posts to answer common queries about this new challenge to sustainability, but we’ve noticed some vigorous support for the sector starting to emerge in other (surprising) quarters with claims that data centres could become new source of renewable energy hubs. We fail to see how, and how and why these centres won’t gobble up all the renewables they can, given their need for social licence. Not to mention the emissions that come from their need to frequently test the systems using diesel or gas.
Thornton spent 15 years at the CEC and 10 as its chief executive, and is currently a non-executive director at VicGrid. He was also previously a non-executive director at Sustainability Victoria and Renew.
The CEC role was last year taken up by former Queensland deputy premier and treasurer Jackie Trad.
