Evaluating Australia’s energy commodity resources potential for a net-zero emission future
Thomas Bernecker A * , Barry E. Bradshaw A , Andrew J. Feitz A and Aleksandra A. Kalinowski AA Geoscience Australia, Minerals, Energy and Groundwater Division, GPO Box 378, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.
The APPEA Journal 62 S555-S561 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ21091
Accepted: 3 May 2022 Published: 13 May 2022
© 2022 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of APPEA. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY).
Abstract
Australia’s future energy production will increasingly be focused on developing clean energy resources to achieve the goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. To achieve this, an understanding of Australia’s natural gas resources and greenhouse gas storage potential is needed to facilitate the rapid implementation and expansion of low-emission technologies. While Australia continues to be a net gas exporter, additional volumes are needed to support future domestic manufacturing capabilities. These extra volumes can be produced from existing accumulations that are close to infrastructure or can be unlocked from highly prospective, yet underexplored regions. The coming decade will see a dramatic change in the energy mix that supports the Australian economy. A major driver will be the development of a hydrogen production industry, initially using fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage (CCS) until the cost of hydrogen production from renewable energy becomes more reliable and competitive. The expansion and projected lower costs of renewable energy generation via solar and wind will ultimately replace much of the non-renewable energies for hydrogen production. Geoscience Australia’s energy-related work program is focused on supporting Australia’s energy transformation assessments of untapped resource potential onshore include the evaluation of geologic hydrogen occurrences, the presence and suitability of subsurface salt horizons for hydrogen storage and the distribution of effective reservoir and seal fairways for underground carbon storage. While offshore, new data from Geoscience Australia’s sea-floor mapping project will improve the understanding of suitable areas for offshore wind farms. Results from these research activities are being made publicly available either through Geoscience Australia’s data portal and its data repository.
Keywords: carbon capture and storage, energy commodity resources, energy mix, enhanced oil recovery, hydrogen, hydrogen storage, natural gas resources, resource assessments.
Thomas (Tom) Bernecker is a sedimentologist/petroleum geologist who holds an MSc from the University of Aachen (RWTH), Germany and a PhD from Melbourne’s La Trobe University. Tom’s early work focused on the development of models for siliciclastic and carbonate depositional systems in NW Europe and in Australia. After a lectureship at the University of Melbourne, Tom joined the Victorian Department of Natural Resources and Energy where his work was focused on the hydrocarbon prospectivity of the Gippsland and Otway Basins. Tom joined Geoscience Australia as the team leader for the onshore hydrocarbon project in 2007 and from 2009 onwards has managed the offshore acreage release program, including the promotion of investment opportunities in Australia’s oil and gas sector. Tom is currently the Director of the Energy Resources Advice and Promotion section in GA’s Minerals, Energy and Groundwater division. He is a member of PESA, SEPM and SEAPEX. |
Dr Barry Bradshaw is a Geoscientist with over 30 years experience undertaking geological and geophysical studies and play-based prospectivity studies for conventional and unconventional hydrocarbon resources, geological storage projects and sediment-hosted mineral deposits. Barry is currently employed as the Energy Resources and Advice activity leader at Geoscience Australia, and has previously worked as a Principal Geologist at CGSS consultants, Senior Research Scientist at AGSO/Geoscience Australia and Research Scientist at Texas A&M University (USA). Barry graduated from the University of Sydney in 1988, and completed a PhD in Earth Sciences at the University of Waikato (New Zealand) in 1991. |
Andrew Feitz is an environmental engineer and Director of Low Carbon Geoscience and Advice at Geoscience Australia. He holds a PhD from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and worked as a senior researcher in air and water treatment technologies at UNSW and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany). He moved to Canberra in 2008 and joined Geoscience Australia where he developed and led a research program to evaluate monitoring techniques for geological storage of carbon dioxide. Andrew leads the geological storage team in Geoscience Australia and Geoscience Australia’s efforts supporting implementation of the National Hydrogen Strategy. |
Aleksandra Kalinowski is a senior geoscientist at Geoscience Australia and holds an undergraduate degree in geology from ANU and a PhD from UNSW. She has worked extensively on CCUS including undertaking geological assessments for CO2 storage and working on technical and policy aspects of CCS at MIT’s Laboratory for Energy and the Environment and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Aleks continues to focus on low-emission energy resources, most recently focusing on geological storage combined with utilisation through CO2-enhanced oil recovery, as well as hydrogen and geothermal energy. |
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