<div>The Exploring for the Future program, led by Geoscience Australia, was a $225 million Australian Government investment over 8 years, focused on revealing Australia’s mineral, energy, and groundwater potential by characterising geology.&nbsp;&nbsp;This report provides an overview of activities, results, achievements and impacts from the Exploring for the Future program, with a particular focus on the last four years (2020-2024). &nbsp;</div>

<div>This video gives an overview of the $225 million Exploring for the Future program (2016-2024), the Australian Government’s flagship precompetitive geoscience initiative. It uses cutting-edge technologies and approaches to deliver world-leading information about the geological structure, systems and evolution of the Australian continent.</div>

<div>The resources industry is a key driver of Australia’s economic prosperity. The resources industry – which includes mining, oil and gas and exploration and mining services – accounted for 18 per cent of Australia’s gross domestic product (GDP) and employed 200,000 people in 2021–22 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2023a). This success is driven by a significant resource endowment, a skilled labour force, substantial capital investment, and the availability of world class precompetitive geoscience data and analysis that supports the resources industry in discovering and extracting resources. &nbsp;</div><div>Precompetitive geoscience data and analysis refers to geological, geophysical, geochemical, and other types of data collected by government agencies. This data is made freely available to all as a public good and provides a foundational understanding of a region’s resource potential before exploration and extraction activities take place. &nbsp;</div><div>Precompetitive geoscience data and analysis plays an important role in supporting resource exploration. Industry surveys conducted by GA suggest that precompetitive geoscience data and analysis is used by over 80 per cent of companies operating in the non-ferrous metals extraction industry and oil and gas extraction industry. The data and analysis help companies to identify highly prospective areas, thereby reducing costs and risks to industry. This stimulates exploration tenement uptake and exploration activity in the most prospective regions, which is required for the discovery and extraction of resources from greenfield sites and expanded brownfield sites. &nbsp;</div><div>Mineral exploration would be significantly more expensive and carry a higher risk in the absence of precompetitive geoscience data and analysis. This would likely decrease the amount of exploration occurring in Australia, as the expected return on exploration would be lower than could be gained elsewhere. A decline in exploration would lead to a subsequent decline in the rate of resource discovery. Over the long-term, this would lead to a reduction in resource extraction at greenfield sites (and to a lesser extent, at brownfield sites) in Australia. Through this relationship, the initial provision of precompetitive data underpins a significant amount of value within the Australian economy, which is easily overlooked. &nbsp;</div><div>It is in this context that Deloitte Access&nbsp;Economics was engaged by GA to estimate the economic contribution of precompetitive geoscience data and analysis in 2021–22. GA is the national public sector geoscience organisation and is primarily responsible for generating and curating Australia’s precompetitive geoscience data and analysis, along with state and territory geological surveys and various research initiatives. &nbsp;</div><div>Precompetitive geoscience data&nbsp;and analysis&nbsp;production: The analysis reveals that Australia’s precompetitive geoscience data and analysis producers had a direct economic contribution of $71 million in value added and supported 432 FTE jobs in 2021–22. &nbsp;</div><div>This value added is derived from wages and salaries paid to employees in the data production process, representing close to half of the total expenditure on data production ($151 million). GA is the largest producer of precompetitive geoscience data and analysis in Australia and therefore had the highest value added among data producers. This is driven in large part through activities conducted as part of GA’s Exploring for the Future program. &nbsp;</div><div>Precompetitive geoscience data&nbsp;and analysis use: Survey data by GA indicates that precompetitive geoscience data and analysis is used widely for resource exploration and extraction,&nbsp;particularly for the discovery of nonferrous metal ores and oil and gas.&nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;Precompetitive geoscience data and analysis allows resource companies to make more targeted&nbsp;investment decisions and deploy their labour more efficiently, resulting in cost&nbsp;savings. &nbsp;</div><div>The direct economic contribution of precompetitive geoscience data and analysis use in 2021–22 consists of: &nbsp;</div><div>• $5.5 billion direct value added and 24,361 FTE jobs supported by the use of precompetitive geoscience data and analysis in exploration and mining support services &nbsp;</div><div>• $24.0 billion direct value added and 34,244 FTE jobs supported by the use of precompetitive geoscience data and analysis for non-ferrous metal ore&nbsp;extraction &nbsp;</div><div>• $46.5 billion direct value added and 21,305 FTE jobs supported by the use of precompetitive geoscience data and analysis for oil and gas extraction &nbsp;</div><div>These estimates are considered conservative. </div><div><br></div><div><br></div>

Australia remains underexplored or unexplored, boasting discovery potential in the mineral, groundwater, and energy resources hidden beneath the surface. These “greenfield” areas are key to Australia’s future prosperity and sustainability. Led by Geoscience Australia, Australia’s national government geoscience organisation, the Exploring for the Future program was a groundbreaking mission to map Australia’s mineral, energy, and groundwater systems in unparalleled scale and detail. The program has advanced our understanding of Australia’s untapped potential. Over the course of 8 years, the Exploring for the Future program provided a significant expansion of public, precompetitive geoscience data and information, equipping decision-makers with the knowledge and tools to tackle urgent challenges related to Australia’s resource prosperity, energy security, and groundwater supply.

<div>Hydrogen is expected to be a key driver of the globe’s transition to net zero. &nbsp;</div><div>Australia is investing significantly, across government and business, as it pushes towards scalable and cost-effective hydrogen production. The Australian Government wants to develop and cultivate the domestic hydrogen industry to become a hydrogen superpower – exporting clean energy across the globe. With current expectations that the hydrogen industry could add an additional $50 billion to Australia’s GDP, the industry presents a great opportunity to support economic growth as Australia transitions to net zero (DCCEEW, 2022a). &nbsp;</div><div>However, much of hydrogen production remains unproven commercially at the necessary scale and there are still a lot of unknowns about how to effectively build this industry in Australia. &nbsp;</div><div>Geoscience Australia (GA), as Australia’s national geoscience agency, is undertaking precompetitive geoscience data and analysis to support the hydrogen sector. This includes conducting research and data analysis to lower the risk of exploration for natural hydrogen and salt caverns, the development of tools to support decision-making by hydrogen producers, and economic assessments into the feasibility of green steel production.&nbsp;</div><div>The economic benefits of precompetitive geoscience data and analysis for the hydrogen industry Deloitte Access Economics (DAE) was engaged to identify, quantify and, where possible, monetise the economic benefits of GA’s work across four case studies. &nbsp;</div><div>As hydrogen is a nascent sector, there is little to no current commercial activity. This limits the ability to estimate the full extent of the economic benefits of GA’s work. As the hydrogen industry matures over the next five years, we expect more economic benefits will be realised, particularly as tenement uptake translates into hydrogen production. &nbsp;</div><div>Through analysis of four current case studies, it is evident that GA’s work is providing clarity and confidence to support large-scale investment decisions. Overall, GA’s work has the potential to deliver Australia an important competitive advantage and fast-track development of the local hydrogen industry. &nbsp;</div><div>Hydrogen Economic Fairways Tool (HEFT): found to enable timely and informed decision-making and lower the risk of investing in, and entering, the hydrogen industry. Specifically, the tool provides significant efficiencies for hydrogen companies, saving $30,000 to $50,000 per prospective project in time and reduced due diligence costs. &nbsp;</div><div>GA research on natural hydrogen: expected to have stimulated tenement uptake activity in South Australia, to explore for natural hydrogen. If even just one tenement was taken up as a result of GA’s data, it could be associated with economic benefits of around $22 million to the hydrogen industry, over a ten-year period (2022-23 to 2031-32). &nbsp;</div><div>GA research on salt cavern storage: hydrogen storage can be prohibitively expensive, which can stall the development of hydrogen projects. GA’s research highlighted salt caverns as a cheaper alternative. If just one industry player switched from conventional gas storage to salt caverns, salt cavern storage could lower the cost by $208 million, over ten years. In addition, salt cavern storage could avoid the loss of $4.1 million worth of hydrogen over the same period (2022-23 to 2031-32). &nbsp;</div><div>The techno-economic assessment of green steel production: GA’s research identified cost-effective locations for green steel production, which could be competitive with conventional steel at a carbon price of $148 per tonne of carbon dioxide&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div><br></div>

<div>To set out how Geoscience Australia is meeting its vision for the Exploring for the Future program, we have summarised the ways our scientific activities, outputs and intended outcomes and impacts are linked, using the Impact Pathway diagram. This updated brochure includes program impact infographics.</div>