With the price of gas going up and up and the energy distribution crisis currently experienced in the eastern part of Australia, it has never been clearer that it is time for change and development.
According to Tim Nelson and Joel Gilmore from The Conversation, “the ESB (Energy Security Board) has noted the biggest risk to consumers is that coal will exit suddenly with little warning because it is old and prone to breaking down. This has been a significant contributing factor to the current crisis.”
This was the case with the closing of Hazelwood power station back in 2017, not enough time was given for investment and capacity to be arranged for alternatives and therefore pushed the price of energy up as there was less supply available.
Of course, there is a push for renewable energy that is reliable to come to the rescue, especially given Australia has plenty of sunshine, wind and water. However, one of the immediate problems, Tony Wood, Energy and Climate Change Program Director at the Grattan Institute says Australia is facing “is the fact more than a quarter of homes are now fitted with solar panels, which is a world-leading position. As with large-scale wind and solar power, our regulation and system management capabilities have not kept pace with this growth.”
Another issue is not having enough infrastructure to be able to store energy gained from solar when it is in excess and be utilised at other times. Which comes to a larger problem, “having a lack of transmission grids that can widely distribute solar and wind storage and move electricity as needed to manage weather-driven variability.” It is reassuring that some interconnections are being built between states and some progress has been made with creating and connecting renewable energy zones, however it seems at a slower pace than is required.
The encouraging news is greenhouse gas emissions from Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM) have fallen by 28% since 2016 and renewable energy is very much on the agenda from both a social and now a political perspective, with commitment from the new Federal Government. It will however, be a work in progress over the next few years to move to predominantly renewable energy.
This creates further demand for skills and talent to influx the energy sector and get moving on a new generation of energy solutions. According to Global Australia, the Technology Investment Roadmap is the cornerstone of the plan to focus on clean energy and technologies. It charts how new low emission technologies can be commercialised through scalable and commercially viable technologies such as hydrogen and energy storage.
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