Welcome to DESERTEC-Australia

All of Australia's energy needs can be satisfied by clean, green renewable energy from the nation's Outback. How? Through concentrating solar power and geothermal energy.

Concentrating solar power uses heat from concentrated sunlight. Geothermal energy harnesses heat from the Earth's interior. Together, they can power the world.

Start with solar energy. Enough solar energy falls on the desert regions of the Earth to satisfy the planet's electricity needs 150 times over.

Solar energy falling in the world's deserts can meet the world's
energy needs hundreds of times over
Sources: OECD/IEA/GENI

Or, to put it another way,

Solar energy outstrips all others in energy production
Source: Craig, Cunningham and Saigo

 

 

The "clean power from deserts" concept is well-developed. In Europe, an organisation called Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation (TREC), also known more broadly as DESERTEC, has proposed developing large-scale solar energy installations in North Africa and transmitting the the power to Europe through high-capacity direct current power lines.

The same thing can be done in Australia. The only difference would be that clean energy generated from the sunny Outback would be carried from west to east within the same country rather than from south to north between countries as in Europe.

If Australia harvested just a fraction of the solar energy falling on the Outback or welling up from the hot rocks below the surface, the country would have no need for nuclear or coal-fired power. In addition, havesting Outback clean energy would generate investment and employment in regional Australia and create knowledge-based exports in solar energy.

Far from hurting economic growth, battling climate change through solar and geothermal energy would actually increase economic growth in Australia.

A network of North Africa solar power stations supplemented by biomass, geothermal and wind could power much Europe
The solar energy falling on Australia's interior coupled with the geothermal energy lying below the surface could easily satisfy all the nation's electricity needs.
Click here to enlarge image

Over the next few decades, the world needs huge investment in new and replacement electricity generation and delivery infrastructure. This represents a big challenge and a big opportunity. If the right choices are made, productive economic forces will be unleashed that will develop immensely-profitable industries that will mitigate climate change. If the wrong choices are made, global quality of life after 2050 will be irreversibly diminished.

Already, global investments made to date in alternative energy have caused prices to fall rapidly. This has been particularly true in solar technology. For evidence, look at the 354MW Kramer Junction plant in California. Built in the 1980s in response to the 1970s' oil crises, the Kramer Junction plant singlehandedly caused concentrating solar power prices to drop 50% in seven years because of its scale. Still operating today, the Kramer Junction concentrating solar power plant now boasts an operating history longer than many of Australia's current coal-fired power plants. This refutes any notion concentrating solar power is an untried, unreliable technology. It's just the opposite: it's more proven than carbon capture and storage and next-generation nuclear, and a lot less dangerous.

Renewables are now benefiting from a powerful beneficial influence known as the learning curve in which the pace of technological improvement quickens with activity (ie learning by doing), creating a virtuous circle. This effect has had a profound impact on renewables such as wind, solar and biomass over the past two decades, entrenching rapid innovation and cost reduction. Mature technologies such as coal, by contrast, have shown little drive to innovation or cost reduction over the past two decades because they've largely been shielded from marketplace competition through monopoly markets, government capture, or uncosted externalities. Whether or not carbon capture and storage can rouse the coal from such lethargy in innovation is unclear.

The long-term learning curve compounding effect in the area of renewables has now become so powerful that many renewable technologies, and especially concentrating solar power, to be significantly cheaper than coal or nuclear by 2015 -- when Australia's first carbon capture and storage plant might be built in Australia -- or 2020, when the nation's first nuclear plant might be built. And remember, renewables such as concentrating solar power and geothermal are proven, with plants using both technologies now operating around the world. Carbon capture and storage and next-generation nuclear plants remain hypothetical, and will require huge startup and ongoing government subsidies with no assurance they will prove economically competitive.

Renewable energy technologies are on a steep downward price curve that will soon
cross over dirtier, mature technologies such as coal
Source: Experience Curves for Energy Technology Policy, International Energy Agency, 2000