www.news.com.au
June 12, 2009
HOT rocks in the state's Outback could reduce Australia's emissions by about 10 per cent, a new report reveals. Environment group WWF-Australia has studied the potential for the emerging renewable source to provide emission-free electricity all year, independent of the weather, and be a source of employment.
SA has some of the world's best geothermal resources. The 270C hot rocks, several kilometres below the surface, can heat water pumped underground. The water can be used to generate electricity in a surface turbine before it is pumped below to be heated again. Geoscience Australia estimates using just one per cent of the heat resource in the ground would provide enough electricity to produce 26,000 times Australia's annual energy consumption.
The report Power to Change: Australia's Geothermal Future, conducted with the Australian Geothermal Energy Association, found that introducing geothermal energy into the grid by 2050 would reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated by electricity by 25 per cent.
The saving would lead to an overall reduction of Australia's emissions of nine per cent. AGEA chief executive Susan Jeanes said geothermal energy could provide all of Australia's electricity sustainably, without greenhouse gas emissions. More Federal Government funding and policy changes must be made to speed up its implementation, she said.
"SA, I suppose, is the heart of the geothermal industry in Australia at this stage.., as 70-80 per cent of the work is happening in SA," she said. The report shows 318 people are employed in the nation's geothermal industry but 3800 jobs could be created by 2020, increasing to 9500 in 2030 and 17,300 in 2050. WWF-Australia chief executive Greg Bourne said the exciting thing about geothermal energy was it could supply power 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
1 comments:
Along with developing new technologies why are we not addressing the inefficiencies in the existing energy system? The current model of the national energy grid is designed for maximum consumption. The model of the national energy grid is not sustainable for a national climate change strategy. We already see the repeating of past mistakes of investments by picking pet projects and having power carried across long distances with geothermal in Queensland. The current business practices of the national grid stakeholders will easily want to make the existing systems more efficient and effective when government policy has designed the system to maximise energy output.
Coupled with these problems of the national energy grid of high levels of distribution inefficiencies is how Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) and Green Power both of which seemed to be designed for large economic players to benefit from. With Green Power it is lot clear what it is purchases and for RECs how it is counted.
Another level of complexity there seems to be little interest in a distributed energy system from the managers of the energy industry. Added to this is the executive management culture of the Australian power industry that is based on status quo management where the game is to maximise their sunk costs and their myopic strategic thinking.
Hence we do not see much roll out of Renewable Energy like large-scale wind farms.
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