The clock is ticking on the drive for sustainable energy
by Barry Brook
The below is a (short) chapter I wrote for the recent book "The Curious Country", published by the Australian Office of the Chief Scientist.
This excellent and well-illustrated book can be downloaded for free here. The blurb:
During 2013, The Office of the Chief Scientist asked Australians what they would like to know more about; what scientific issues concern them and what discoveries inspire them.The results shaped this book – a collection of essays about the scientific issues affecting Australians today.The Curious Country is available as a free download from ANU E Press. It is currently available as a pdf, so can be downloaded and read on your e-book reader, tablet, computer or mobile phone
POWERING THE FUTURE - The clock is ticking on the drive for sustainable energy
(Download the PDF for this article and the other energy-related chapters, here)
ACCESS
to cheap and reliable energy has underpinned Australia’s development
for decades. Fossil fuels — coal, oil and natural gas — provided the
concentrated energy sources required to build our infrastructural,
industrial and service enterprises. Yet it’s now clear this dependence
on carbon-intensive fuels was a Faustian bargain and the devil’s due,
because the long-run environmental and health costs of fossil fuels seem
likely to outweigh the short-term benefits.
In
the coming decades, Australia must tackle the threats of dangerous
climate change and future bottlenecks in conventional liquid-fuel
supply, while also meeting people’s aspirations for ongoing increases in
quality of life – all without compromising long-term environmental
sustainability and economic prosperity. Fortunately, there are science
and technology innovations that Australia could leverage to meet these
goals.
Seeking competitive alternatives to coal
How
can Australia shift away from coal dependence and transition to
competitive, low-carbon alternatives, and what role will science and
engineering play in making it happen? To answer these questions, a key
focus must be on electricity generation technologies — electricity is a
particularly convenient and flexible ‘energy carrier’— and to consider
the key risks and advantages with the alternative energy sources that
will compete with fossil-fuel power.
In
2012, the majority of Australia’s electricity was generated by burning
black and brown coal (75 per cent), with smaller contributions from
natural gas (13 per cent), hydroelectric dams (8 per cent) and other
renewables (4 per cent). The nation’s installed capacity now totals over
50 gigawatts of power generation potential, with stationary energy
production currently resulting in the annual release of 285 million
tonnes of carbon dioxide, about 52 per cent of our total emissions.
Clearly,
the non-electric energy-replacement problem for Australia would also
need to consider transportation and agricultural fuel demands. In a
world beyond oil for liquid fuels, we will need to eventually
‘electrify’ most operations: using batteries, using heat from power
plants to manufacture hydrogen from water, and by deriving synthetic
fuels such as ammonia or methanol.
Under
‘business as usual’ forecasts produced by Government energy analysts,
electricity use in Australia is expected to grow by 60 to 100 per cent
through to 2050 with hundreds of billions of dollars of investment
needed in generation and transmission infrastructure just to keep pace
with escalating demand and to replace old, worn out power plants and
transmission infrastructure. At the same time carbon dioxide emissions
must be cut by 80 per cent to mitigate climate-change impacts, via some
combination of enhanced energy conservation and new supply from clean
energy sources.
An uncertain mix of future options
Although there are a huge number of potential energy options now being developed that might one day replace coal in Australia not all alternatives are equally likely.
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