After 8.3 million page views in 2017, we’re taking a short break

This has been an extraordinarily successful year for RenewEconomy, as readers flocked to our website to share our excitement over new energy technologies, and our despair at some of the same old energy politics.

The number of page views in 2017 is up an astonishing 45 per cent to 8.3 million page views (so far), from 5.7 million in 2016 – taking our total to 26.5 million page views since we were established in 2012.

RenewEconomy has 15,000 subscribers to its daily newsletter, who on average check in every 2 days, a very high engagement rate for a daily niche publication.

We have a broader “core audience” of nearly 50,000 that visits the site at least once a week, and another 2.3 million who checked in from time to time in 2017.

Many of these one or two-timers were attracted to “hot” articles, like the response to our story on autonomous driving and car ownership, “Death spiral for cars: By 2030, you probably won’t own one”, which remains our most read story of the year.

Tesla also dominated attention, from the Powerwall to the Tesla truck, and then to the Tesla big battery, and this story Tesla big battery outsmarts lumbering coal units after Loy Yang trips and others that led to a day of record page views and visits on Wednesday this week.

It was a nice way to end the year. (See Sophie’s story for more on the most read articles of 2017).

2017 also saw the launch our two podcast series – Energy Insiders and Solar Insiders – which have drawn a huge response, and great feedback from people within and without the industry who like the chatty format and the great interviews.

On behalf of RenewEconomy, I’d like to thank all our readers for their support and for their engagement with the team and the website.

We’ve had 70,000 comments on our stories. And there is nothing so gratifying as to be told at a conference or event, or simply while sitting in a cafe (usually on the laptop) that our work is valued and appreciated.

I’d also like to thank our sponsors and advertisers – the repeat customers and the new ones – our conference partner (Informa), and to the many, many people who kindly made a donation to RenewEconomy, which remains a freely-accessible site, to help make sure we can make ends meet.

And I’d like to thank the crew who put RenewEconomy together each day – Sophie, Sam and Emilie – along with regulator contributors David, Nigel and Anne, and the many others who provided articles, ideas, story tips, corrections and advice.

We’re taking a break and will be back in January. We hope we don’t miss too much fun. We look forward to your support again in 2018, and wish you the best for the holiday season.

Oh, and if you want to buy a Solar is the Future t-shirt, you can click here.