Australia’s Energy Transition
- The capacity and generation outlook trend suggests, that progress is being made for Australia to achieve its target to reduce emissions by 50-52% per capita by 2030. Trends from the power generation outlook share, shows renewable power generation account for a significant percentage, specifically solar and wind. The GHG mitigation strategy created by the Australian government, contains the reduction in coal based thermal power generation in next decade.
- Electrical vehicles are a key step to meeting the target of zero emission (GHG). Financial incentives, regulatory changes and charging infrastructure are the three main drivers that will accelerate the uptake of electrical vehicles in Australia, but the complexity of penetrating the Australian market, have left the country lagging behind other countries such as Norway and the UK.
- Renewable fuels such as ethanol are becoming very promising. Australia has three ethanol facilities, one in New south Wales and two in Queensland, with a total production capacity of 440 million litres a year, still far behind the country's targets.
- Carbon Capture have brought decarbonization improvements in power plants. And CCS is critical to a lower-carbon future and essential to achieving the net zero goals. Australian government are pushing CCS via finical investments-$300 million in CCUS over the next 10 years.
- The development of new technologies such as low carbon hydrogen are driving change in cleaner energy sources. The growth of low-carbon hydrogen can help the country to reach its goal of zero emission, holding now 20% of the world upcoming green hydrogen capacity.
The power sector contributes the most emissions in Australia as itis dominated by thermal sources (coal, oil and gas), accounting for almost 6-7% of total global coal use and being world major exporter as per its major coal reserves.
On the other side, over the last decade the cost of generating electricity from wind and solar has fallen by 70%, and 80% respectively and is foreseen to continue falling by another 11% and 30%. The global energy crunch, coupled with an influx of cheap wind and solar farms and their uptakes has resulted in a rise in coal prices. This means the cost of fuelling coal-based power plants has gone up, in turn discouraging the use of coal-based power stations .
Although there is no Australian mandate in place, the government promotes the use of biofuels via excise tax rebates, mandates, fuel quality standards, grant programmes and import tariffs. New South Wales has a mandate use of 6% ethanol in gasoline and 2% biodiesel. In Queensland, there is a mandate of 4% ethanol in gasoline and 0.5% biodiesel in diesel. Each state has its own biofuel policy but have all fallen short of their original target due to loopholes by obligated parties.
CCS is identified as a priority low emissions technology and the Australian government is investing in enabling infrastructure for large-scale deployment: The Australian government are investing over $300 million in CCUS over the next 10 years. Even so, the legal framework for encouraging and regulating carbon capture and storage (CCS) in Australia is divided among the Commonwealth states and territories. Coupled with other policies and incentives.
Hydrogen developments have been accelerating supported by policies and projects, making the country the most attractive to develop green H2 projects, representing almost 20% share of the total upcoming low-carbon hydrogen capacity.
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