Renewable Energy In Australia: Current And Future Prospects

Importance of Renewable Energy

Energy is essential to the life of each and every human being. The rapid increase in the use of energy has led to the prediction that the world will be left with practically no or little energy by the year 2045. According to, Azad et al. (2014) the choice of energy by a human being has an impact on the natural systems in different kinds of ways and thus the organization need to be managed accordingly in the ways of depending on the different kinds of the organizational needs and measures.

Renewable energies are sources of clean, inexhaustible and increasingly competitive energy. They generally differ from the fossil fuels mostly in their diversity, abundance and potential for using them anywhere in the planet and above all they do not produce greenhouse gases that are the largest causes of global warming in the world. Renewable Energy can be naturally replenished on a given human timescale and comes from a large number of different sources. This includes the likes of Wind, sun, tides, waves, geothermal heat and many others similar to them. A large number of countries of the globe have adopted a resolution to limit the use of non renewable energy and increase the percentage of use of renewable energy to save important energy sources for the future generation and most importantly reduce pollution and global warming.

Energy in Australia is not only the production of electricity for consumption and export but it also highlights the politics of the Australian Government. The country is the fourth largest producer of coal and coal was used as the basic source of energy. However the effects of global warming and increasing concern for the environment forced the Government to change their policies and formulate an environmental friendly policy for the organization.  The last few years has ensured a greater shift towards the renewable energy such as solar power and wind power. Another main reason for shift in the polices of the Government of Australia towards the renewable energies has been the different statistical figures which described Australia to have the highest per capita emissions in the world.

Renewable Energy in Australia deals with the efforts that have been and continue with to be made in Australia to quantify and expand the use of the renewable energy in the generation of electricity. Australia has been undergoing its greatest transformation since the 1950’s (Alotto, Guarnieri & Moro, 2014). The changes are mostly based on and driven by environment, economic and engineering factors. The preferences of the consumers have also been changing accordingly and the increase in the desire for independence and control over the electricity supply and use. The government of Australia is the main leader in this case and has been continuously implementing a number of different practical initiatives to improve the energy security, reliability and affordability in the country.

Australian Government’s Policies towards Renewable Energy

Most of the electricity of the country is produced from the burning both brown as well as black coal at different power stations. On the other hand Natural Gas is the third largest source of energy in the country and it is used for the generation of power. This is again used for transportation and for the purpose of cooking (Alotto, Guarnieri & Moro, 2014).  The natural gas is generally obtained from remote reservoirs of the country like Moomba and Bass Strait gas fields. As of now coal seems to be coming from Queensland with untapped reserves in both New South Wales and Victoria. As said earlier, the increase in the use of the renewable sources has changed the modern day energy map of the country. The renewable sources of energy now accounts to around 15% of the Australian Electric supply and thus it can be easily be predicted that the number will rise in the recent future.

According to, Zaman (2015) Australia is the world’s ninth largest energy producer and seventeenth largest consumer of non-renewable energy in the globe. The energy consumption of Australian people is largely based on the consumption of primarily the non renewable sources of energy that includes the likes of Coal, oil, gas and many other as such. The total amount of non renewable energy consumed amounts to around 96% of the total consumption of the energy. Renewable sources of energy are thus being introduced by the Government to counter the negativities of global warming and limit the country from different kinds of environmental degradation. Renewable Energy in Australia deals with the different kind of efforts that have earlier been and still continues to be produced in Australia. It is produced in order to quantify and expand the use of renewable energy as a fuel for transport and for generating thermal electricity.

The renewable Energy resources of the country are mostly underdeveloped and is totally controlled by the Australian Energy Market Operator that are investigated into two future scenarios that features an electricity grid that are fuelled entirely by means of renewable resources in the coming years of 2030 and 2050. Therefore the modeling for the renewable sources of energy is quite justified in the country (Zaman, 2015).  The various types of new energy demands are being fulfilled by the Australian Government by means of solar photovoltaic sets installation which comes under different kind of PV Projects of the government. Two of the most recent projects in this case that illustrates the co-operation between the industry and the Government are the implementation and installation of different kind of solar cells and secondly the solar powered station that has been planned for North Western Victoria. Apart from this the Government of Australia has also allocated a considerable amount of budget for development of new technology for generating different kinds of energy sources. Apart from this the Government has also started working on the development of the geothermal energy sector and other sources of renewable energy.  

Potential for Various Sources of Renewable Energy

In the most recent times, different kinds of diverse challenges have emerged in the society, that includes the likes of climate change, security of energy supply and economic issues which can be also cited as economic recession. Therefore the world population has targeted the large scale use of renewable resources as the main source of energy for their use. Therefore the identification of the potential of these sources of energy have become significant in nature.

The Australian Government has come up with an unique proposal by using technology in an effective yet different manner to establish the large scale use of the sustainable resources of energy by identifying their actual potential. The proposal is to start the use of the simulation tool that simulates the operation of the given energy-system in order to supply a set of different energy demands. Most importantly the simulation tool is used to operate in hourly time steps over a time period of more than one year. There are other tools that can also be used similarly including the likes of the top- down tool which is a macroeconomic tool that uses the macro-economic data to identify the growth in the energy prices and the demands. On the other hand, a bottom-up tool identifies and analyses the specific energy technologies and thereby identifies investment options and alternatives. The Government of Australia has provided a detailed framework to implement the following plan in the country. The successful implementation of the plan will ensure the country to move towards a green future.

The study has aimed to research deeply on the methods of research and aim for getting the knowledge of the current source of energy in Australia and the source of future energy in the country.

The research question that has been developed for this particular research is as follows;

1. Why is the use of the renewable energy being slowly increased in Australia?
2. What are the main sources of energy that are being currently used in Australia?
3. What are the main sources of renewable energy that can be developed for the future use in Australia?
4. How can the policies of the Australian Government help in changing the face of energy use in Australia?

The above mentioned questions directly links to the research topic and have been formulated after the analysis of the literature review of the following topic. The research questions will help in the collection of the information that is the main aims of the research.

The research plan will identify the different tools of the research and will chalk out the way by which the scientific research will be completed. The tools of the research include research approach and research strategy along with the collection of data and the design of the research.

The research will use the deductive research approach as data on the topic will be selected from different earlier models and theories based on energy in Australia. The selection of peer reviewed journals to complete the research will help to ensure the reliability of the research. The selection of the deductive approach is supported by selecting the descriptive research design that helps to deduce results from the questions selected. Lastly the selection of both the interview and sample research strategy is another major part of the research plan. The selection of such strategies will help to get a clear idea about the selected models and the research activities.

Task Name	Duration	Start	Finish
Project Renewable Energy	264 days	Wed 12/19/18	Mon 12/23/19
Selection of the source of Renewable energy by the Government	60 days	Wed 12/19/18	Tue 3/12/19
Selection of the Stakeholders	28 days	Wed 3/13/19	Fri 4/19/19
Joint Meeting with the Stakeholders	1 day	Mon 4/22/19	Mon 4/22/19
Planning to Study the source	1 day	Tue 4/23/19	Tue 4/23/19
Identification of the potential uses	10 days	Wed 4/24/19	Tue 5/7/19
Enquiry on feasibility of the Source of Energy	30 days	Wed 5/8/19	Tue 6/18/19
Studying the reserve and the source scientifically	45 days	Wed 6/19/19	Tue 8/20/19
Submitting the report to the stakeholders	1 day	Wed 8/21/19	Wed 8/21/19
Meeting of the stakeholders	1 day	Thu 8/22/19	Thu 8/22/19
Decision to proceed with the excavation	2 days	Fri 8/23/19	Mon 8/26/19
Making the source fit for commercial use	45 days	Tue 8/27/19	Mon 10/28/19
Marketing and promotion of the energy source commercially	40 days	Tue 10/29/19	Mon 12/23/19

 

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