Coal Elimination Makes Room for Gas and Renewables Emission Reduction

THE CONFERENCE CALLER: RISC managing director Martin Wilkes opened his address at the 2022 RIU Good Oil and Gas Energy Conference in Perth by telling the crowd that although he has green tendencies, he is a pragmatist rather than an activist.

This, he said, enabled him to approach the thesis of his presentation, Emissions Reduction and Energy Security, Can We Have Both?

Confident that he would not alienate the industry types in the audience, Wilkes began by showing a graph that demonstrated the energy intensity use for a number of western countries.

France, he explained, was way below the average due mainly to its reliance on nuclear energy.

In first and second place respectively, Australia and the US share similar trajectories, the difference between the two being our nuclear moratorium, but both have introduced limited restrictions on coal-fired power, sending each graph on negative downturns.

England has recently lowered its energy use by almost eliminating coal entirely from the power reliance equation.

“If you can take coal out of the mix, you will see a significant drop in emissions,” Wilkes said.

By replacing coal with variable renewables and gas to the point where power demand for 100 per cent for any one point in time, emissions are reduced to a point where they are negligible.

“Keeping gas in the mx is a good idea,” he said.

“If you don’t keep gas in the mix, and you keep coal in the mix, you actually don’t do much in terms of emissions reduction.”

Wilkes used the analogy of a home BBQ compared to a power station.

Using a gas BBQ, he said provided the advantage of turning on the gas lighting the flame, cooking then turning the gas off.

When using a charcoal BBQ, he said, meant lighting the beads, waiting for them to reach a suitable heat, cooking your meal then leaving the charcoal to cool down in its own time.

“It’s the same with power stations,” he suggested.

“Gas-fired power stations turn on and off easily,” he said.

“Coal-fired power stations don’t.”

New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, the states most reliant on coal-fired power generation, account for a vast majority of the Australia’s emissions.

Western Australia, with around sixty per cent gas generated power produces much less while Tasmania, which operates on around 90 per cent renewables due to hydro-electricity is a big winner.

South Australia produced renewable-fired power headlines when it removed coal from its power mix, giving column space that spruiked the state’s moments of 100 per cent renewable generation.

“That’s all great,” Wilkes said.

“But the reality of it is that they are still reliant on gas for about 40-odd per cent of their power generation.

“They installed the world’s largest battery in 2018 – it is still one of the top four or five – but it doesn’t actually provide storage capacity or dispatchable capacity.

“It provides firming and grid stability and what they call ‘inertia’.”

What the data appears to be telling us is that there is an avenue for Australia to substantially reduce its emissions while eating its energy security cake.

Coal-fired power generation can be replaced, at the moment, with a combination of renewables and gas.

“Beyond that, I don’t believe we yet have a viable solution to get to net zero,” Wilkes said.

“It may come, but I think for the next ten to fifteen years we should concentrate on what we can do, and that is getting coal out of the mix.”

“Which, I think means we do need to accept the fact that we might need to increase gas-fired power generation.”