Australian Power: Can renewable technologies change the dominant industry view?

With carbon dioxide the major contributor to anthropogenic climate change, being required to reduce the carbon emissions from burning coal for electricity presents a systemic shock to Australian power. The Australian government is committed to the development of its coal seam gas resources for export to lucrative world markets and to transition domestic power generation to greater resilience by moving away from a reliance on coal to lower-emissions intensive gas. Using a commercially available modelling package, PLEXOS, we model what a transition to gas fired generation in the year 2035 would deliver and compare that to a transition to power from renewable technologies. The results indicate that a transition to gas fired generation reduces emissions only marginally and that wholesale prices will be higher than the renewable energy option.