Tuesday, November 25, 2014
Can Australia become the worlds leading LNG exporter
The LNG industry claims to be Australias fastest growing export sector.Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane shares the rosy outlook. "Australia will shortly become the second largest - or optimistically, the largest - exporter of LNG and that is nothing short of amazing," Mr Macfarlane said during the Australian National Conference on Resource and Energy on October 3.
Is that a reasonable prediction?
Mr Macfarlanes office told ABC Fact Check he based his comments on advice from the Department of Industry and research by the Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics, the national energy forecaster. The bureau says Australia will produce 83.0 million tonnes of LNG by 2017. How does this compare with the rest of the world?
According to statistics from the International Energy Agency, whose 28 member countries from the developed world are large users of energy, Australia is currently the third largest LNG producer in the world, behind Qatar and Malaysia.
The agency says Australia has the capacity to produce 33 billion cubic metres of LNG a year. In tonnes, the measurement used commonly in Australia, that converts to 24.4 million tonnes.
While Australia is in third place, the agency says Australia has more new LNG plants under construction than any other country.
On completion, the new projects will add a further 61.4 million tonnes of LNG capacity, bringing Australias total to 85.8 million tonnes. These are due to be completed by June 2018.
Not many other LNG exporting countries have new projects underway, according to the agency. The closest is the United States, constructing plants capable of producing 17.8 million tonnes.
When plants under construction are added to current capacity, Australia will lead the way with 85.8 million tonnes. Qatar, the current leader in LNG exports, will be next at 77.7 million tonnes and Indonesia third at 36.3 million tonnes.
Thursday, August 28, 2014
Solar wind could replace all fossil fuels in Australia by 2040
Solar and wind energy could replace all fossil fuels in Australia by 2040 if their recent rate of deployment is maintained and slightly increased over the next 27 years – delivering the country with a 100% renewable electricity grid “by default” as early as 2040.The stunning conclusions come from research from Andrew Blakers, the director of the Australian National University’s Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems. It notes that nearly all new electricity generation capacity in recent years has been wind and solar photovoltaics (PV), and demand has also ben falling since 2008.
Blakers says that if this situation continues then Australia will achieve renewable electricity system by 2040, as existing fossil fuel power stations retire at the end of their service lives and are replaced with renewables.
And the cost will be no greater than having fossil fuels because, as Bloomberg New Energy Finance notes, wind is already cheaper than new coal or gas-fired generation and solar soon will be. These are the critical points – because renewables are often painted as expensive when compared to fully-depreciated, 40 years fossil fuel plants. But not compared with the new capacity required to replace ageing fossil fuel fleet.
Blakers says his scenario works even using the more conservative technology cost forecasts prepared by the Bureau of Resource and Energy Economics. These forecasts are being updated, but they came to similar conclusions as BNEF on technology cost trends, just not quite as quickly.
The 100% by 2040 scenario is probably not that much different in scope to current trends. Australia was sitting at around 10 per cent renewables in 2010, and will probably end up with at least 25 per cent by 2020, given current trends on rooftop solar and the fixed 41,000GWh target for large scale renewables.
