CSIRO’s Energy Transformed Flagship has set itself a bold target: to halve greenhouse gas emissions; and double the efficiency of the nation’s new energy generation, supply, and end use; and to position Australia for a future hydrogen economy.

While it will be years before some of the steps towards achieving this goal will become reality, the Flagship already has a number of initiatives underway.

According to the Director of the Energy Transformed Flagship, Dr John Wright, one important initiative has been the creation of a collaborative forum on the theme of energy futures. “We’ve brought together industry, Federal Government, public interest groups, environmental groups and others to develop a number of scenarios in 2050,” says Wright. “It’s a very incisive group with a wide variety of views – ranging from the big end of town right through to environmental viewpoints.”

The forum spent about 18 months analysing various scenarios and released its report in November 2006.

Modelling scenarios

“We talk about eight scenarios between now and 2050, taking into account the full gamut of environmental consequences, energy technology types, even the price of petrol at the pump.”

Wright says there is a base case of “business as usual”, which is followed by various scenarios including one that looks at the effect of an energy shock. “This would be where the price of oil zooms up for example,” says Wright. “How would that change the ‘business as usual’ scenario? When that happens we might see a lot of fuel substitution and, if so, what would the impact of that be?”

The forum also looks at scenarios of reducing greenhouse gases via a market mechanism. “This is where we analyse the impact of the price of carbon,” says Wright.“We’ve also introduced different technology scenarios, bringing nuclear power into the mix, and we’ve discussed the impact of carbon sequestration and storage.We’ve also looked at the case where we have a greatly enhanced distributed energy system – how would that be managed and what would the consequences be? And we’ve done a very deep cut scenario with a reduction of CO2 emissions by less than 50% to see what the difficulties would be to get to that stage.”

Painting these pictures has enabled Wright and his team to assess where to prioritise their efforts. “The theme of energy futures was a guide to take up to 2050 so we could get a better view of where to target precious research dollars and assess the areas that would have the best impact in low emissions technology and transport,” he says.

Already, the Flagship coordinates the Centre for Low Emission Technology at the Queensland Centre for Advanced Technology. It also coordinates the National Solar Energy Research Centre in Newcastle, New South Wales. It is working with Holden in developing hybrid and, ultimately, fuel cell vehicles. It has also developed a co-generation process which has been successfully demonstrated at Hornsby Council, an outer suburb of Sydney.“We were approached by Hornsby Council who wanted to replace their air conditioning system with something that had much lower greenhouse gas emissions,” says Wright.“We replaced it with a system that delivered reduced greenhouse gas emissions and used energy much more efficiently.”

The system generates electricity and heat, with the heat driving a device that turns incoming ambient air into cooling. Apart from producing electricity on site, power can also be exported to the grid.

Clean coal technology

While the Flagship is making inroads in various areas of energy efficiency and innovative production, all eyes are on its work with carbon sequestration and storage (CSS). When it comes to capturing carbon, there are three main ways this can be done: pre-combustion capture, oxygen combustion and post-combustion.

In Australia, where there are numerous coal-fired plants actively contributing to greenhouses gases and climate change, post-combustion capture (PCC) technology is at the fore because it’s the only type of capture that can apply to both new and existing plants. While newly built plants can be equipped with the technology to capture carbon, it’s the existing plants that need to find a retro-fitted solution.

The Flagship is coordinating a PCC project in Newcastle. This involves treating the flue gas being emitted by plants in order to capture the carbon emissions before they get into the atmosphere. “This is about the development of new solvents for the extraction of CO2 from flue gases of existing power stations.We want to make this cost cheaper,” says Wright.“We need to ensure we have a solvent that won’t be degraded by the impurities in the flue gas – we want it to be benign. And once we capture the gas in the solvent we want to be able to release the CO2 from the solvent before we then take the CO2 away and bury it.”

While many believe that efforts should be directed to developing renewable energy sources as a way of reducing greenhouse gases, Wright says that clean coal technology is essential.“We have a big stock of existing power plants in this country that are going to be producing electricity for the next 30 to 50 years,” he says. “We need technology that’s going to reduce the emissions we’ve got already. It’s the same situation in places like China and India – they’re rapidly building coal-fired stations. If the world doesn’t produce technology we can retro-fit onto existing power stations, it’s going to be extremely difficult for the world as a whole to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.”

Wright says that international collaborations to find a solution are already underway. “We share fundamental information,” he says. “And my vision is that we can develop appropriate technologies that could then be acquired by the rest of the world.”

www.energytransformed.csiro.au

What is the Energy Transformed Flagship?

The Energy Transformed Flagship was formed in 2003. It is one of six CSIRO Flagships; the others being food, health, light metals, oceans and water. According to the Flagship, its main initiatives centre around:

• Developing a national energy model
• Developing and implementing technologies for near zero emissions from coal-fired power and renewable energy systems
• Developing technologies for new generation transport vehicles and alternative fuels
• Developing and integrating leading edge technology and energy management systems to facilitate the introduction of distributed generation into the Australian transport and stationery energy sectors.