All-Energy Australia speakers share their plans for clean energy

All-Energy Australia - to be held from 9-10 October at Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre - is a free-to-delegate clean and renewable energy exhibition and multistream conference. With more than 100 leading local and international speakers and in excess of 250 exhibitors, it attracts up to 5000 delegates from around the world.

Two of this year’s speakers are John Hofmeister, the US-based former president of Shell Oil Company, and Brian Rourke, managing director of Tidal Energy Australia. Hofmeister and Rourke have spoken about the subject matter of their keynote speeches.

  

John Hofmeister and Brian Rourke.

Hofmeister will be delivering the international keynote address at the opening of the conference, which he says he will use to “raise the alarm” about our politicians’ constant bickering about energy policies without any action.

“Like so many democracies, Australia appears to have an inability to solve difficult problems in a timely fashion,” Hofmeister said.

“You shouldn’t sit by and play petty politics waiting to see the planet burn before you are compelled to act.”

Hofmeister says an obsession with short-term political expediency will invariably lead to severe energy shortages and environmental destruction. To avoid this, he has called for the establishment of an independent Australian Energy Reserve Authority (ERA) that would set future policy direction.

To be run along the lines of the Reserve Bank, Hofmeister suggests the authority “should have between six and 10 governors drawn from multiple fields of expertise, including industry and the environment, consumer and financial interests.

“Appointees would be subject to federal parliamentary approval and they would have 10-year terms; but importantly, they would act with total autonomy.”

As he sees it, ERA will have four primary objectives, namely to:

1. Assure the uninterrupted supply of affordable energy from all sources;
2. Establish needed infrastructure to move energy from where it is produced to where it is consumed;
3. Ensure environmental protection to improve land, water and air quality; and
4. Deliver efficiencies through technology.

“This country has a real opportunity to lead the world in solving what has been an unsolvable problem - namely the governance of energy,” Hofmeister said.

He is calling on Australians to demand change by letting their politicians know that what is happening now is nowhere near good enough.

Later in the day, Rourke will give an overview of the Derby Tidal Power Project in the Kimberley Region, which will be the first tidal station in the Southern Hemisphere and the world’s first ‘double basin’ scheme. It is expected to supply 40 MW of clean, uninterrupted energy to the mining industry at a rate of 30-35 c/kWh - a price below that of diesel.

“We know there are a lot of people in the Derby area who would like power at a reasonable rate and there are many projects that can’t be green-lighted because the price of power would be prohibitive. We are about to change all that,” Rourke said.

Rourke explained that no double basin tidal stations have been built before because you need to find two estuaries close enough together to generate power, with the water flowing from one basin to another. That is the case with the east and west branches of Doctor’s Creek on the outskirts of Derby.

After 15 years in progress, Rourke said of the project, “We have signed off from the state government and are waiting on the Commonwealth ‘go-ahead’. The mining company that will underwrite the development is now simply seeking environmental approval.”

The power station will then take about two years to build, said Rourke, depending on the length of the wet season. It will hopefully be followed up by further projects, with Rourke saying, “We have identified sites in the Kimberley region that would have 200 times the output of this power station.”

Not only will the power station cause an influx of new industry to the region, but Rourke said tidal power “is the cleanest form of energy and, importantly, it is totally predictable and continuous … We can predict how much energy will be produced at any time of the day over the next 40 years.”

To register for All-Energy Australia, visit http://www.all-energy.com.au.