Australia Highlights Domestic Energy Security Challenges
The Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson AM MP, has opened the Australian Financial Review Energy Conference and described energy security as one of the defining issues of our time.
Minister Ferguson said: “Australia’s abundance of energy resources provides an enormous competitive advantage for Australian industry. But the great challenge we face is to keep it that way.
“The domestic challenge is to transform Australia’s energy generating systems to produce the energy required in the 21st century at the lowest possible price and carbon footprint.
“In order to achieve this, the Government, through the $4.5 billion Clean Energy initiative, is supporting the development of a broad suite of clean energy options. The CPRS and the Renewable Energy Target of 20% by 2020 will also provide huge incentives for Australia’s renewable sector; the RET alone equating to a subsidy of more than $20 billion to the sector.
“The export challenges involve exploiting our resources of coal, uranium and gas in a way that advances the nation’s economic and environmental interests while providing energy security for our trading partners.
“Playing our part in the development of technologies which will enable the world to use our resources sustainably is also part of the challenge. International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts show the proportion of global energy produced by coal increasing, not decreasing, throughout the coming three decades.
“China’s coal production now exceeds that of all IEA member countries combined. In 2007, China produced more than 32 per cent of the world’s coal-fired electricity. And in recent years, it has added new coal-fired generation at a rate that replicates Australia’s entire coal-fired power sector every four months. In the coming decade China will bring on line something in the order of 1000 average-sized coal-fired power stations.
“It is recognised internationally that reducing emissions from coal use is critically important to meeting the energy security and climate change challenges we face.
“The Government’s $2.4 billion CCS Flagships Program and our funding of the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute provide an opportunity for Australia to play a leadership role in the commercial deployment of this technology; the success of which is clearly of global significance.”
Topics: Australia, Australia Financial Review Energy Conference, Australian industry, carbon footprint, Clean Energy Initiative, clean energy options, CPRS, defining issue, energy, Energy Security, Governance, renewable energy, Renewable Energy Target, renewable sector, security, security challenges
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