Geothermal Plant
ENERGY giants Origin and AGL have been busy beefing up their wind-farm portfolios in recent months in preparation for the upgraded Renewal Energy Target — should it make its way through parliament. But perhaps the most revealing aspects of presentations both companies made last week was their faith in geothermal energy as a significant source of base-load power in the future.
Wind power is expected to dominate the early years of the RET scheme, which will require that 20 per cent of Australia’s power generation comes from renewable sources by 2020.
But Origin told the UBS Energy and Utilities Conference that geothermal energy, developed at scale, could be a superior long-term solution to meet its RET targets, while AGL said geothermal would likely play a key role in base-load generation, even if some projects — not its own — faced significant transmission costs.
Origin is a joint venture partner with Geodynamics, while AGL has a 10 per cent stake in another aspiring geothermal producer, Torrens Energy, and the right to take up to a 50 per cent stake in its project in exchange for funding.
Geothermal producers believe they can have 2200MW of capacity generating power by 2020. The Australian Geothermal Energy Association and World Wide Fund for Nature say this would create 3800 full-time jobs by 2020. Their report said direct employment in the industry could more than double by 2030 and jump to more than 17,300 by 2050.
Another report released last week by WWF, this time in conjunction with ocean energy producer Carnegie Corp, predicted a further 3200 jobs would be created if Carnegie met its goal of 1500MW of ocean energy capacity by 2020.
However, both reports argued that for those technologies to meet their potential in the shortest period, the RET would need to be strengthened, possibly through banding, where extra credits are allocated to emerging technologies, direct assistance for drilling and an expansion of early development programs.
Full article: theaustralian.news.com.au/business
parkinsong@theaustralian.com.au
