Weekend Australian
Saturday 13/2/2010 Page: 5
THOUSANDS of engineering and construction jobs may be generated in western Victoria this decade as the Portland-Warrnambool district becomes a new eastern seaboard hub for power supply and a key contributor to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Victorian Employers Chamber of Commerce and Energy says an energy revolution is under way in the state. It estimates that demand growth will require 6000MW of new power plants by 2030, with the requirement going up to 12,000MW if the four existing brown coal-fired generators in the Latrobe Valley have to be replaced to meet greenhouse requirements.
VECCI chief executive Wayne Kayler-Thomson says the capital cost of new power stations will lie between $18 billion and $36bn. He also predicts that up to $10bn will be spent on transmission networks to move electricity from generators to the market and another $5bn m ay be required to upgrade natural gas supply capacity. While the political focus over the next few years will be on the fate of the Latrobe Valley coal burning plants in eastern Victoria - which currently meet 85% of the state's power needs most development attention will be on the other side of the state.
Three gas-fired developments are proposed in southwest Victoria. Origin Energy has begun building a $640 million peaking power plant, with a capacity of 550MW, near Mortlake and says it will consider doubling its size. The first phase is due to be commissioned next summer and the project overall could cost $1.5bn. The critical need for peaking capacity in Victoria was highlighted in January's heatwave when demand soared to more than 8000MW compared with a normal day-today requirement of 5700MW.
Santos is pursuing feasibility studies on an $800 million gasfired baseload power station at Orford and says it will consider extending the development to 1500MW in three stages. AGL Energy is weighing up building a 500MW gas peaking plant near Koroit and says it could be extended to 850MW. These developments can provide more than 2000 construction j obs, the firms say. Meanwhile the renewable energy industry sees southwest Victoria as a major wind energy hub for eastern Australia. Fortythree projects are under construction, in planning stages or mooted for the area. If all are built, they will add more than 4000MW to Victoria's generation capacity and cost more than $7bn.
State Energy Minister Peter Batehelor says $2bn in renewable investment is under way to build 1836MW of wind generation, creating more than 2000 construction jobs. However, wind investment is stalled nationally because of industry concerns about the federal government's renewable energy target, the RET's new provisions to support solar heaters and hot water pumps having caused a large slump in the value of the underpinning generation certificates.
AGL Energy, which is planning the biggest development, an $850m windfarm at Macarthur near Portland, able to provide enough energy to power Geelong, has said it will not proceed until the RET problems are resolved. Two other new generation technologies may be available in western Victoria. The federal government has contributed $66.4m to an ocean energy demonstration project off Portland and the state government is supporting geothermal exploration in the area. Both, if commercially viable, could provide zero emission baseload power.
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