Corporations only exist to profit shareholders, and CEO's have a fiduciary obligation to maximize those profits, lest they be fired by their boards. They can ONLY be directed by profit incentives and only government can change the rules so that the desired actions are profitable. Australia is not the only country to be struggling to come up with a carbon cap and trade system that works well, and the EU sustem has had bumps in that road as well as they adjust it to work better. This is true for every complex endeavor of humans.
Germany's program to phase out nuclear and coal plants involves reimbursing power companies for the remaining years of service those plants could have provided. They have achieved 32% RE and their leadership really jump started the whole RE worldwide by their demand for PV and wind power and the resulting lowered cost for PV we now enjoy. They provided massive incentives for private and cooperative RE development. There has been some backlash for the 50% increase in power bills (not as bad as that for the refugee program) but so far they have overall done an astonishing job of leading the world in RE. All this after footing the bill for bringing Eastern Germany out of severe poverty; a huge undertaking. Change for the better is rarely cheap or easy.
On algae- the problem seems to be lack of financial backing for the technically difficult and expensive large scale system development and refinement. It would take government level backing. Corporations can NOT do this because of the huge impact on near term profits. Of the half dozen algae-oil studies I have read were pretty basic, low budget, university done, and were open and honest about potential problems and the need for more R&D. Alas, any US congressman or senator who pushed a reasonable algae-oil research and development program would find his opponents flooded with corporate coal, oil and gas money. Both senators and congressmen are typically spending 3-4 hours a day, every working day, soliciting funds for their next campaign. That's the way "democracy" works in the USA.
Regarding superinsulation and trapped heat:
Before I built my home here I spent a fair amount time with a free thermal modeling program provided by an in-floor heat provider. That helped me design for the best bang for my buck; you could change the wall, ceiling, floor, stem wall and window(s) insulation values against your soil and air temperatures (day and night) and see what the BTU needs where for that room. What I found was that typical homes are absolute crap if you don't want to piss away energy. For construction details I did some on my own and stole a lot of ideas from Canadian designs. They have to be smart with their winter temperatures.
30C is only 85F. That's mild enough that you have to be savy to get good bang for your insulation buck, especially with such a huge space to insulate (I vaguely recall your new place is roughly 5000 SF?) for a reasonable payback time. My climate is much more extreme; 102 F is common in the day in June and early July (though nights are 40F cooler).
If you nights are cool, the very large belt driving ceiling type, whole house ventilators can be very effective. I can't tolerate the noise, among other problems, so just open my windows at night. Since the house only gains 3 degrees F during the day, that's all I have to loose. It works well, though cloudy nights which don't cool off (rare) mean the house will be a few degrees warmer the next day.
I have experimented with various schemes for cooling via cool water in the in-floor heating system. The floor slab cooling approach has been proven by some New Mexico funded studies with real data for real homes and roof mounted collectors for night sky cooling, in a climate almost identical to mine. I've built an 16 foot tall water cooling tower and collected data all night, trickled water down a 30 foot x 3 foot section of steel roof panel and collected data for a variety of night temperatures, wind and humidity, and measured well water and earth temperatures. I've also helped my neighbor use his well pump to chill his floor, and collected water volume and temperature data to calculate BTUs. I've also seriously studied direct ground source (63F year round at about 10 foot deep here) for the same cooling system. My cooling needs are so infrequent and modest that I am reluctant to do it; my home only got to 80F for two days last summer, due to not being able to open up from wildfire smoke.
In insulation, blown or sprayed attic insulation is often a bargain. In an RE world, most inland locations should have requirements for R40 side walls and R70+ attics. Insulated foundation walls are also critical in many climates...heat DOES go down by convection! We do a lot of dumb design like slab floors which touch the concrete foundation wall and then outside becomes concrete. Or slabs which extend outside, exposed, at doors. That is a heat and cold wicking system like you can't believe as concrete is highly thermally conductive. In my home, adding 4" of EPS foam board between slab edge and stem wall cut my modeled BTU requirement in half. It was done with two 2 inch strips, one 8" tall, the other 16", and using 6" block for the upper stem wall coarse. Peanuts in cost and not much effort either.
I used extra wide door sills to bridge over the 4 inches of foam which separates the slab from the stem wall. Yes, doors are hell, thermally, as are windows. To keep my total heat loss to 3 degrees F on winter nights (10-15F typical) I stuff the windows with Reflectrix-type material. That is a cheap way to have an R-8 window. In my last home, I made folding insulating panels for glass patio doors and windows, with Astrofoil (aluminum faced bubble) material inserts. In my current superinsulated home, I have only 1 outside door, and it leads to an small entry way that is an air lock and is kept about 8F cooler/warmer than the house. The gas kitchen is in an outside corner of the house, is insulated (both walls and floor) from the house, is kept with cross-flow windows open all summer. Cooking does not heat the house, nor does the propane refrigerator. The refrigerator heats the small gas kitchen adequately in the winter. My 4' by 32' solar hot water panel and 800 gallon insulated storage tank heats the house in winter. Last year I spent $50 on propane to run the backup propane water heaters from Dec. through Feb. Most of that $50 is just stack loss for the cheap, no electronics, low efficiency gas water heaters being on.
I did the super insulation thing for my own benefit, for comfort and quiet, and to save operating costs. I also wanted to leave an energy-responsible home behind when I'm gone for the long dirt nap. I'm very, very pleased with the cost/benefit of super insulation. It's like off grid PV- once you do it you realize it was pretty easy and wish you'd done it long ago.