News

Well this was a blast from the past. AltEnergy, then known as RENergy, was writing about a company called EnviroMission in the early 2000s.

At that time the company was ASX-listed with the code EVM and its mission was to build solar towers in Australia and the USA.

The proposed solar towers were of a futuristic design working by solar updrafts in tall, chimney-like structures spinning turbines to create electricity.

EnviroMission received approvals in 2010 to sell electricity from two proposed 200 MW solar updraft towers in Arizona, but the deal fell through.

The company struggled to get backers to enable its plans to become a reality, and in 2019 it delisted from the Australian Stock Exchange.

After that we lost track of the company until now, when EnviroMission launched a new mission.

The company said it has evolved its “revolutionary” solar tower technology “into a new generation of renewable power—STEGS: Solar Thermal Energy Generation and Storage”.

EnviroMission describes STEGS (patent pending) as a modular and highly efficient system that “captures and stores heat in a storage medium and uses hot air to turn turbines”.

However, the new STEGS technology reduces the project footprint and “descales construction risk as it uses standard power plant equipment” compared with the solar tower design.

An agreement has been secured to provide EnviroMission with “exclusive rights to assess, develop, and commercialise a large-scale hybrid solar-geothermal renewable energy project at the Wellington Park property in Gippsland, Victoria”.

EnviroMission has been granted access to 2050 acres of land near Golden Beach, within the Gippsland REZ, which contains a high-grade geothermal resource with an estimated temperature of 170°C at a depth of 3000m beneath the surface.

According to EnviroMission, “This geological resource provides an invaluable complement to EnviroMission’s proprietary Solar Thermal Energy Generation and Storage System (STEGS™), enabling the augmentation of proven geothermal heat with advanced solar thermal storage and generation.

“The result is a project that combines geographical, geological, and policy advantages to create one of the most compelling renewable baseload opportunities in Australia.”

As it has been doing almost all of its existence, EnviroMission is seeking investors to advance its projects, in particular to commission a pilot program at Wellington Park which would “validate a synergy between STEGS™ and the Land Holders own proprietary Geothermal concept (Troetherm)”.

Full details are available at https://enviromission.com.au/