Australia’s renewable electricity generation has more than doubled over the last decade, accounting for 34 per cent of Australia’s energy production in 2023 – an increase of 11 per cent from the previous year alone.
Despite record renewable generation, fossil fuel sources still comprised 65 per cent of total electricity generation – so how can we make sure our broader decarbonisation goals stay on track?
We sat down with CSIRO’s Director of Energy, Dr Dietmar Tourbier, to find out.
Driving change
In the 2022–23 financial year, Australia used 1,083 terawatt hours (TWh) of energy, however only 22 per cent (238TWh) of this was electricity.
Dietmar Tourbier explained that while increasing the amount of renewables in the electricity generation mix is important; to achieve net zero emissions, we need to address the imbalance in Australia’s domestic energy consumption by replacing the other energy sources with electricity generated by renewables.
This means increasing the capacity of new renewable installations each year.
Indeed, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) estimates that the NEM must almost triple its capacity by 2050 to replace retiring coal capacity and meet increased electricity consumption as other sectors electrify.
On top of this, Australia needs to continue optimising its energy system, including making better use of the storage we already have and increasing energy efficiency.
Developing new and improved technologies will play an important role – luckily, this is CSIRO’s purpose.
“CSIRO sees itself as a key catalyst for Australia’s energy transition," Dietmar said.
"Our goal is to deliver the science and technology that enables and accelerates it.”
To do this, CSIRO frames its energy research projects into big impact areas across three key themes – the electricity transition, decarbonising industry and transport and carbon management technologies – touching all sectors and tracing to a central vision of an affordable, reliable, cleaner and more engaged energy transition.
Electricity transition
Electrification using renewables is essential to decarbonising Australia’s energy sector. Accelerating the transition means making more renewable energy faster. To tackle the immediate need of managing our carbon budget, we need to focus on technologies we can deploy now, and at the same time find future solutions for the other hard-to-abate sectors, Dietmar said.
CSIRO has a myriad of technological innovations in the works to facilitate this.
For example, CSIRO’s ultra low-cost solar (ULCS) initiative aims to bring down the cost of the entire solar PV system to support the deployment of large-scale solar projects.
By reducing the installation and maintenance costs of utility-scale solar PV (through increasingly intelligent systems and designs, autonomous robotic tooling, coatings to increase energy yield and geotechnical improvements), CSIRO hopes to catalyse the rapid growth needed to increase installed capacity and keep Australia on track for its 2050 target.
“These ULCS projects share ARENA’s goal of reducing the cost to 30 cents per watt,” Dietmar said.
In addition to making sure we have more renewables to generate electricity, we also need to make sure that we’re able to transmit and distribute it securely to the end-user.
CSIRO is advancing a variety of technologies for the transmission and distribution grids, as well as energy storage – including work with AEMO to ensure the grid remains secure as renewables increase.
This research includes trialling vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology, which is likely to provide increasing amounts of energy storage as electric vehicles continue to grow in popularity.
“Ideally, electric vehicles will provide terawatt hours of storage to offset the need for additional storage capacity.
“This will also require new technologies to stabilise the grid and supply as V2G progresses as a customer energy resource technology,” Dietmar said.
Decarbonising industry and transport sectors
Significant changes are needed to decarbonise the industry and transport sectors; however, it is a complex and challenging task.
CSIRO’s research in this area aims to help the sectors achieve their emissions goals by integrating low carbon solutions.
“Let’s face it – not everything can be electrified,” Dietmar said.
A key example of this is long range aeroplanes, which cannot feasibly be electrified with current technology. CSIRO is working on low carbon fuels as an alternative, including technology to reduce the cost of direct air capture.
“Our target here is to go below $100 per tonne of captured CO₂,” Dietmar said.
The captured CO₂ can either be stored away or utilised for another purpose entirely.
“In one way, you can capture carbon directly out of the air, make hydrogen at a low cost and then put it together to create fuel that can be burned again.
“It then becomes a net-zero cycle.”
Currently, synthetic and biogenic fuels cost approximately five times as much as jet fuel.
“The goal is to get low carbon fuels roughly on par with the cost of today’s fuels,” Dietmar said.
Another reason for the emissions of heavy industries is the requirement for middle- and high-grade heat, which has previously only been achievable with fossil fuels.
CSIRO’s concentrated solar thermal process uses falling ceramic particles and patented technology to capture and store solar energy as heat, potentially achieving more than 1,000°C at a cost lower than gas.
It is being commercialised through a recent spin-off – FPR Energy – offering a lower-cost, renewable alternative for industrial heat.
Carbon management
Another key priority to achieving net zero emissions is carbon management. Even with rapid decarbonisation, the historical CO₂ that remains in the atmosphere needs to be mitigated, as does the carbon from current and future activities that cannot be fully decarbonised.
“Simply catching the carbon will not solve the problem – we need to do something with it,” Dietmar said.
Net Zero Australia estimates that Australia will need to permanently store between 80–100 million tonnes of CO₂ annually by 2060 to reach net zero.
CSIRO has a group of geophysicists and geoscientists on the case, sharing their extensive knowledge on the movement of gases and liquids underground, including how to detect whether they are moving or stationary.
“We’re using that technology and knowledge to develop safe methods of storing CO₂ in the subsurface, which we’ll need into the future,” Dietmar said.
Community and environment
CSIRO also prioritises community engagement and environmental outcomes, which are integral to an affordable, reliable and sustainable energy transformation.
For example, CSIRO collaborates with Federal, State and Territory governments, communities and industry in the Gas Industry Social and Environmental Research Alliance (GISERA), to inform and support decision making in regional areas and communities impacted by onshore gas development.
Established in 2011, the Alliance initially focused on coal seam gas developments, but Dietmar said it has since grown and evolved.
“CSIRO is also engaging with communities in rural areas and on traditional lands about renewable energy solutions.”
An integrated system
Importantly, Dietmar said CSIRO is working toward a holistic view of the energy system that becomes increasingly connected, dynamic and collective.
Today’s energy system works in silos – with petrol sent to transport, coal sent to make electricity, natural gas sent to houses or to make electricity, and wind and solar sent to houses and factories.
The future system will be much more integrated, Dietmar said.
“It will have heat flow, electricity flow, fuels and hydrogen. They will each be made and used in a distributed fashion that will require a very different way of operating.”
Collaboration is key
To ensure a successful net zero journey in Australia and beyond, collaboration will be paramount, Dietmar said.
“Competition can be good, but when it comes to the net zero transition, we need industry, government and the innovation sector to work together on the joint challenges we’re all facing.”
CSIRO aims to facilitate this collaboration, with projects such as the low emissions hub at the Northern Territory Government’s proposed Middle Arm Sustainable Development Precinct. The project envisages industries accessing shared infrastructure, including technologies that enable CO₂ to be captured or imported, and then converted to low emission products, or compressed, transported and permanently stored offshore and deep underground.
If realised, the hub will be one of the largest multi-user, multi-access hubs in the world. It will involve close collaboration between the Federal and Territory governments, as well as a range of industry research agencies, engineering and technology companies and foreign governments.
“We need to see more of these hub concepts where industries can help each other out on the journey.”
Global collaboration will also play an important role, Dietmar said.
Australia is a founding member of the Global Power System Transformation (GPST) Consortium, which leads cutting-edge research to help energy systems around the world transition to a renewable grid.
CSIRO and AEMO lead Australia’s contribution, engaging researchers from around the globe to undertake research to address key technical challenges in operating the energy systems of the future.
“Australia will see many of these challenges before other countries, which puts us in a position to lead parts of the global transition – fortunately, the research is a two-way street, with Australia also benefitting from other countries’ experiences.”
A futuristic vision
Australia’s 2024 projections suggest emissions will reach 42.7 per cent of 2005 levels by 2030, falling just shy of the 43 per cent target. Despite this, Australia is well on its way to net zero.
Dietmar is eager to see Australia continue along its trajectory toward an affordable, reliable and sustainable energy system.
“I’m also looking forward to even more international collaboration as the research community finds new ways to help each other out across borders, making sure we do what needs to be done together.”
Looking even further into the future, Dietmar is excited by the demonstration of potentially game-changing technologies like quantum batteries and their potential to revolutionise energy storage.
With a sparkle in his eye, he explained the counterintuitive principle of a quantum battery: the bigger it is, the faster it charges.
Until a few years ago, they only existed on paper.
“We now have a group working on a laboratory demonstration of a quantum battery. At the moment, the battery they’ve designed can light up an LED for one femtosecond.
“It’s still decades away, but the technology could provide a way for us to rapidly store and release energy when we need it.”
Opportunities abound
The energy transition is not just a path to net zero for Australia – it represents a huge economic opportunity.
“We have all the resources that the world needs to make the global energy transition happen.”
This will lead to demand from around the globe for Australia’s critical minerals, clean energy and renewable technologies that other countries are simply unable to make themselves, Dietmar said.
“There’s a great economic upside in this journey for Australia; we just have to go out and get it.”
This article was first published by Energy Magazine. Read the full article here.