Authors / CoAuthors
Champion, D.C. | Wyborn, L.A.I.
Abstract
Energy drives the modern world and underpins our current way of life. The industrial age was fuelled by access to reliable high grade energy sources, such as coal and oil, which drove global economic expansion and modernisation. There is a strong correlation between energy consumption levels and GDP. Australia is a large consumer of energy (5.87 Tonnes of oil equivalent per person annually), ranking twentieth on total consumption, and 16th on a per-capita basis. Australia is well endowed with traditional energy resources, e.g., coal, gas, uranium, and is a large energy producer (8th in the world). Australia also benefits from energy exports. Energy, therefore, strongly contributes to the nation's wealth and living standards, but increasingly it is recognised that these are dependent on access to cheap energy. Environmental concerns and the for the need energy security will drive a switch to other more sustainable energy types, preferably from indigenous energy sources. Although the Australia continent is ideally situated to make use of many alternate energies, e.g., our hot and arid nature makes solar an ideal potential renewable energy source, such sources will not provide all of our needs and will not contribute to peak energy loads. Fortuitously, Australia is endowed with above average concentrations of the radioactive elements (K, U and Th) in many of our rocks. Australia has ~38% of the world's current uranium reserves. The energy generated by the naturally-occurring break down of radioactive elements is immense, and this energy can be captured either by fission of U (and Th?) in nuclear reactors, or by the use of geothermal energy. Combined, both sources have the ability to meet base and peak load power requirements, and the potential to underpin Australia's energy requirements well into the future.
Product Type
nonGeographicDataset
eCat Id
70048
Contact for the resource
Custodian
Point of contact
Cnr Jerrabomberra Ave and Hindmarsh Dr GPO Box 378
Canberra
ACT
2601
Australia
Keywords
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- External Publication
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- Hot Rocks
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- commodities
- ( Theme )
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- geothermal
- ( Theme )
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- geology
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- AU
- Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)
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- Earth Sciences
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- Published_Internal
Publication Date
2010-01-01T00:00:00
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unknown
Topic Category
geoscientificInformation
Series Information
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Unknown
Parent Information
Extents
[-44.0, -10.0, 112.0, 154.0]
Reference System
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