Adelaide, Jan 1, 2007 AEST (ABN Newswire) - State and Federal energy and water authorities have been called on to more rapidly adopt "new thinking" if Australia is to overcome its sluggishness in exploiting options to combat drought, urban water shortages and increasing power bills.
Failure to embrace such "thinking" would create a clean air and water legacy that locked Australia into an unnecessary "catchup" cycle, according to Melbourne-based solar power and desalination project development company, Acquasol Pty Ltd..
"We will become a country dependent on imported aid rather than becoming a leader in advanced energy and water technology," Acquasol Managing Director, Mr Michael Fielden, said today.
"The plethora of climate change, clean air and drought breaking aspirations in recent weeks is notable for its lack of any real attempt to sway public opinion away from Australia's reliance on coal-based fossil fuels as energy drivers," Mr Fielden said.
"Yet the cost differential between alternative energy sources and coal fired, emission busting conventional power sources, is narrowing.
"The cost of concentrating solar power is expected to fall 7% annually compared to just 2-3% for new fossil fuel power plants equipped with carbon capture and storage".
Mr Fielden said his concerns were echoed in a recent article published by ABC online and he quotes: .
"This price plunge and solar power's huge potential generating capacity in Australia, offers a clear pathway to enable Australia to reduce its overall carbon emissions significantly without the implementation of nuclear power and its long term contaminated waste".
Wes Stein from the CSIRO says the new development (Solar Thermal Energy)
could provide for Australia's future energy needs.
"It would only require about 50 kilometres by 50 kilometres in the centre of Australia somewhere to provide all of Australia's electricity needs in 2020," he
said. "That's not very much of Australia." Source: 31/03/2006. ABC News Online By science reporter Sarah Clarke
Mr Fielden said projects like that proffered by Mr Stein, or Acquasol's own plans for a combined solar power generation and desalination plant, must win government support.
"If not, we will lose the opportunity to adapt more efficient power and water technologies to Australian conditions and mature them enough to deploy them on a wide scale," he said.
'This comes into context when you consider that the cost of desalinated water is expected to equal the current cost of extracting natural water supplies by about 2020 in some parts of Australia - and that does not take into account higher costs flowing from drought conditions."
Acquasol is driving the development of a A$370 million full-scale commercially operating demonstration plant at Point Paterson, south of Port Augusta in South Australia, with the objective of extracting advanced efficiencies and synergies in energy and water production.
Point Paterson will combine the following processes into a world-first single process
- A 50 MW parabolic trough concentrating solar power generation station
- A 150 MW Combined Cycle Gas and Steam Turbine (CCGT)
- A reverse osmosis and multi-effects desalination plant
- The brine by-product will be harvested in solar salt ponds on site by Australia's largest commercial salt producer, Cheetham, rather than returned to the sea.
The plant will have the capacity to replace the Upper Spencer Gulf's reliance on water piped from the River Murray hundreds of kilometres away.
Acquasol has alliances for the project with mainstream power distributors and infrastructure developers and plans a capital raising and Stock Exchange listing early in the New Year to complete feasibility work and financial close by the end of 2007.
"Adapting these proven technologies can develop an insurance policy for Australia that adequate supplies of drinking water can be assured in the future without reliance on rainfall, damage to marine life, or raising greenhouse gas emission levels because of the high energy drawdown needed in conventional desalination," Mr Fielden said.
"Climate change will exacerbate our future water shortages and desalination on its own is not enough. Mid range estimates by the Water Services Association and prominent MP, Malcolm Turnbull, put our expected shortfall of water in Australia at between 800 and 1200 gigalitres a year by 2030.
"It is essential technologies able to counter this impact are developed through the establishment of demonstration plants now to help avert future water shortage problems everyone is talking about today. Otherwise, similar technologies will be developed overseas and imported into Australia in the long-term."
Contact
Kevin Skinner
Senior Consultant
FIELD PUBLIC RELATIONS
231 South Road
MILE END SA 5031
Tel: (08) 8234 9555
Fax: (08) 8234 9566
Mob: 0414 822 631
kevin@fieldpr.com.au
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