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PUBLISHER’S LETTER
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Publisher & Editor-in-Chief
Leo Simpson, B.Bus., FAICD
Production Manager
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ISSN 1030-2662
Australia’s future energy
options
Recent energy conferences are highlighting
the huge growth in energy consumption both
in Australia and around the world. In spite of
serious concerns held by many academics about
global warming, people are just getting on with
life and that means using ever more energy. The
last two decades have seen Australian electrical
energy consumption double but that pales into
insignificance when compared to China which
currently is installing the equivalent of Australia’s
entire electrical grid every YEAR!
Truly, the economic growth and accompanying growth of infrastructure
in China is enormous and it is well on the way to becoming the dominant
world economy in the next 20 or 30 years. (Most commentators reckon that
the Chinese will achieve world dominance within 50 years but having seen
a small fraction of their recent infrastructure development, I think it will
be much sooner.)
So where is all the world’s energy growth to come from? Much of it will
continue to come from oil but coal is seen as ever more important in spite of
its large contribution to green-house gases. Many energy experts see carbon
sequestration, the burying of carbon dioxide gas, as the solution, along with
the idea of “carbon trading” which is set to boom if the Kyoto protocol is
ratified by Russia.
Personally, I regard carbon sequestration as a bad joke, even though it
has already been demonstrated with carbon dioxide extracted from gas
production in the Norwegian North Sea. I suspect that carbon sequestration will never happen in a big way, just as the burial of nuclear power
station radioactive waste products deep in stable underground rock strata
has never happened.
Unfortunately too, renewable energy resources such as solar and wind
power seem unlikely to ever make a really major contribution to the world’s
energy needs. Wind power is being taken up in a big way, even in Australia,
but the electrical grid then requires big reserves (provided by thermal power
stations) to provide for times when the wind is not blowing. If Australia
had large solar generation it could complement wind power, on the basis
that when the wind is not blowing on the coastal regions, the sun is probably shining strongly in the central Australian regions. But that is unlikely
in the near future.
Still, coal power stations are not really the way to go, especially as we
have huge reserves of gas. Gas-fired power stations are much more efficient
(due to co-generation techniques), have much more benign greenhouse gas
emissions and do not need huge open-cut mines which blight the landscape.
For the rest of the world, nuclear and coal-fired power stations seem likely
to continue as the main electricity sources and regardless of how systems
are tweaked to improve efficiency, coal-fired power stations seem destined
to be built in increasing numbers. Does that seem pessimistic? Yes, but short
of asking the rest of the world to limit their living standards in order to cut
greenhouse gas emissions, there does not seem to be a realistic alternative.
In the far future, maybe we will have a mixture of solar and fusion power
stations, giving a cleaner environment.
Leo Simpson
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