What Is Renewable Energy In Australia?

Based on the report from Department of Australian Bureau of Statistics, Melbourne, the capital and most attractive city of the state of Victoria, has a population of 4,641,636 in total as of 2016. Consequently, the large number results in a considerable amount of energy usage. It is shown from Graph 1 to 3, although virtually all households tend to select electricity as their major source of energy in Australia, approximately 83% Victorians prefer using mains gas for either hot water systems or heating systems due to complex reasons. One of the most important reasons might be that the price of electricity is extremely high.

Most of the energy that we use comes from fossil fuels like petroleum and coal that provide electricity and gas to power our growing energy needs. These fossil fuels, currently providing most of our home energy needs are finite resources, which mean that, they will eventually run out. Furthermore, the world’s population is growing rapidly. Countries are becoming more industrialised and are using notable amount of energy. Individuals are consuming nearly twice as much as energy as they were using 30 years ago. In Australia itself, the total amount of energy consumed by households has increased over the past two decades and is forecast to increase. This could be due to the dependence of our standard of living on easily available energy. Between

With the increasing Australia’s population the demand for reliable energy to support our power needs now and into the future is escalating, with majority of the Australia’s energy depending solely on coal power with concerns arising on whether this is the best option for Australia’s future or focus more on harnessing green renewable energy. This essay will argue that green energy is the best option over coal power, for the world and Australia’s future, such as solar and wind. The biggest challenge though will be finding a way in being able to harness the resources nature provides to support the growing demand.

In Australia, carbon emissions contribute to the problem of global warming and climate change worsening. Therefore, people want to move to a more sustainable energy future, because renewable energy is the only valid method to reduce emissions. But it is very difficult to widely use renewable energy since this transition have to face numerous barriers. This essay will argue that adopting renewable energy cannot be overcome due to lack of financial and political barriers.

Wind energy is one of the most commercially reliable and cost-effective renewable energy (RE) resources available worldwide and its utilization in Australia is undoubtedly an advantageous prospect. Initially, the generation of wind energy is produced through the motion of air from high pressure to low pressure, as this progression is a direct consequence of the solar heating of various parts of the Earth's atmosphere and its planetary motion, thus resulting in the air being deflected to the right in the northern hemisphere and in the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere (Duffie and William, 2013). It is generally observed that wind power generation is the best suited source for Australia's future as it is clean, low-cost (in

Throughout time, we have heard how renewable energies are more efficient than coal. They are cleaner, better for the environment, and allegedly more cost efficient. How cost efficient fossil fuels are may depend on which side you look at – the electric company or people and businesses. For an electric company, it is very cost efficient. However, it will take time to see the efficiency to a business. Electric companies have to build or change the plants they currently have in order to meet the needs of the new system, whether it be wind, solar, etc. The “war on coal” came too quickly; as we will detail below, you cannot quit using your main source of heat to generate electricity and expect the country to run as it has before. Changing takes time and money.

The path to renewables in Australia in recent times has been met with a somewhat contentious debate. In a time where “No challenge poses a greater threat to our future than a changing climate.”(Barack Obama, August 3, 2015) the plight of Renewables is of more importance than ever in our history as a pillar on to which our highly carbon emitting society must rest, if we ever seek to reduce the impact on our climate both government and individuals must seek out and adhere to serious carbon abatement strategies. The idea of previous successful government involvement in the renewable energy industry through regulation and initiatives may elude the everyday modern Australian, marred with controversial schemes, which in hind sight were rolled out to fast without sufficient regulations has seen relatively recent schemes reduced or even thrown out. However, it is best to remind ourselves that some of Australia’s rite of passage as a nation were through Renewable energy projects. Examples of this such as the Snowy Hydro Scheme which at the time was named as one of the civil engineering wonders of the modern world and the White Cliff Solar Power Station which can be seen as a world first solar energy provider.

The total electricity generation in Australia in 2016 is 285 GWh (Department of the Environment and Energy 2017). Fig 1 shows the Australian electricity generation source; it seems from the fig that 84% from the total generated electricity from burning the carbon based fuels and just 16% from renewable energy sources. According to Choudhury et al. (2010) study, about 40 GWh of the electricity generated is used to operate the air conditioning and refrigeration systems.

Energy: According to John Boozman renewable energy is the future. He supports that government should invests into wind, solar, and hydrogen energy technologies.

The latest research by RES Australia has concluded that till 2030 more drought and wildlife will lead to the decline in agriculture and forestry production over southern and eastern Australia. In line with a RES official report that looking within the renewable market, wind power is the world’s fastest-growing way in producing

Australia has made great gains in this area, to the extent where nine of twelve emission intensive power stations have closed down and renewable energy usage has gone up from 8 to 14 %.In Australia’s renewable energy sector, many gains have been made through the Renewable Energy Target which is working to ensure a quarter of Australia’s electricity comes from renewable sources by 2020. This is helping Australian households and businesses install solar and other renewable energy technologies as well as supporting growth and employment in the renewable energy

Will solar energy and other renewable, alternative energy sources, replace the current main source of electrical energy production oil and coal? What alternative energy sources show the most potential for producing electrical energy in the future? How will this transition take place and when will it take place? What are the educated projections for the time in which crude oil will no longer be vital to producing electricity and how will renewable energy sources lead to a world of sustainability? The answers to these questions and others will be presented in this paper.

Global warming is a phenomenon leading to climate change. Human being, particularly the burning of fossil fuels releases large amounts of polluted gases. These gases absorb infrared radiation and cover the atmosphere. Increasingly infrared radiation is inside the Earth, which becomes warmer. This process is called global warming (Houghton, 2005). Australia is one of the countries, which is suffering from climate change. The average temperature of Australia has increased by 0.7°C since the past century. Average precipitation northwest regions will increase, while average precipitation in the southwest and southeast in Australia will decline in future decades. Moreover, Australia’s coastlines will suffer from corrosion and flood because it is predictable that there will be an 8–88cm growing global sea level (Preston and Jones, 2006). Owing to climate change, Australia’s biodiversity, ecosystems, and natural habitats are damaged. For example, the habitat of the coral communities and Great Barrier Reefs are disappearing (Preston and Jones, 2006). Owing to the effects and it is an energy crisis in the future, exploring renewable energy source feasible and sustainable development is necessary. Therefore, in the long-term, the potential of wind energy and solar energy could be the answer to global warming in Australia and determine the current barriers to renewable energy in terms of the energy industry and the locations in Australia.

In the disadvantages of hydro-energy, dams are extremely expensive to build, and must have high standards. People living in villages and towns that are in the valley to be flooded, must move out. This means that they lose their farms and businesses. In some countries, people are forcibly removed so that hydropower schemes can go ahead. (Technologystudent.com, 2015). Building dams can also create natural disasters such as earthquakes.

Despite facing the same challenge as other countries, Australia keeps her track of development in a designing route by a high-proportion fossil fuel consumption during recent decades. In 2013-2014, the fossil fuel such as coal, oil and gas, took 94.1% part of whole energy consumption, on the other hand, 5.9% part of renewable energy could even be ignored. (Australian energy statistics, 2015) However, there is almost no doubt that to replace fossil fuel consumption with non-fossil fuel energy is the inevitable trend of future ages. It is not only one of the best approaches to preserve the earth environment in our time, also leaving enough resource and technology accumulation to next generations building a healthy and efficient society. It is a long journey to achieve this promising change with difficulties in terms of cost, no-fossil fuel energy distribution,