Product catalogue
Supporting Australia's geothermal industry through provision of precompetitive geoscience data : Geoscience Australia's role
Australia's emergent geothermal energy industry is growing rapidly. So far, 29 companies have applied for geothermal exploration licenses. The majority of these companies are prospecting for Hot Rock geothermal resources for electricity generation, with some companies targeting hydrothermal resources. The Hot Rock model in the Australian context comprises a thick sequence (>3km) of low-thermal conductivity sediments overlying deeper high-heat-producing granites. Until now, the key dataset available to industry to guide their geothermal exploration has been a map of crustal temperature at 5km depth1. Compiled from temperature measurements made in 5,722 petroleum wells across Australia, the map indicates a vast geothermal resource. Additional national-scale geothermal datasets are either incomplete, not publicly accessible, or have not been collected.
In August 2006, the Australian Government announced an Energy Security Initiative. It provides $58.9M to Geoscience Australia (the national geoscience and spatial information agency) over five years for an Onshore Energy Security Program (OESP). The OESP aims to better understand Australia's geological potential for onshore energy resources such as petroleum, uranium and geothermal, and includes the acquisition of new seismic, radiometric, heat-flow, magneto-telluric, gravity, magnetic, geochemical and drill-hole data. Providing new data will help attract company exploration in new areas by enhancing the chances of discovery and reducing the risks to investors. Established as part of the OESP, a new Geothermal Energy Project will generate precompetitive geoscientific information for geothermal explorers through two major activities: creating maps of heat distribution across Australia, and developing a geothermal information system. Heat distribution will be mapped in three ways: (1) new heat flow measurements in existing and new drill-holes; (2) a granite source-sediment heat trap map to identify Hot Rock systems; and (3) enhancements to the 5km-temperature-map method of Chopra and Holgate1. The geothermal information system will include thermal conductivity, thermal gradient, geochemistry, density, and heat production amongst other data types.
The Australian Government is also facilitating and funding the preparation of a Geothermal Industry Development Framework, which is being lead by the Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources. The Development Framework aims to support the growth of Australia's geothermal industry by identifying opportunities and impediments to the industry's growth, and developing strategies to ensure that technical, economic and regulatory obstacles are tackled in a coordinated way.
1 Chopra, P. and Holgate, F., (2005) A GIS analysis of temperature in the Australian crust, Proceedings of the World Geothermal Congress 2005, Antalya, Turkey, 24-29 April 2005.
Simple
Identification info
- Date (Publication)
- 2007-01-01T00:00:00
- Date (Revision)
- 2019-04-08T06:07:49
- Citation identifier
- Geoscience Australia Persistent Identifier/https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/65393
- Cited responsible party
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Author Ayling, B.F.
1 Author Lambert, I.B.
2 Author Budd, A.R.
3 Author Holgate, F.L.
4 Author Gerner, E.
5 Author Ernst, R.
6
- Point of contact
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Custodian ED
Owner Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Custodian Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice
- Topic category
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- Geoscientific information
Extent
))
- Maintenance and update frequency
- Unknown
- Keywords
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External Publication
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Abstract
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- Theme
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geothermal
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Hot Rocks
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- Keywords
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AU
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- Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)
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Earth Sciences
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- Keywords
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Published_External
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Resource constraints
- Title
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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence
- Alternate title
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CC-BY
- Edition
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4.0
- Access constraints
- License
- Use constraints
- License
Resource constraints
- Title
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Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem
- Edition date
- 2018-11-01T00:00:00
- Classification
- Unclassified
- Language
- English
- Character encoding
- UTF8
Distribution Information
- Distributor contact
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Distributor Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice
- OnLine resource
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Related Product
Geothermal Energy Project
Resource lineage
- Statement
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Unknown
- Hierarchy level
- Non geographic dataset
- Other
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External Publication
- Description
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Source data not available.
Metadata constraints
- Title
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Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem
- Edition date
- 2018-11-01T00:00:00
- Classification
- Unclassified
Metadata
- Metadata identifier
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urn:uuid/a05f7892-d0b8-7506-e044-00144fdd4fa6
- Title
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GeoNetwork UUID
- Language
- English
- Character encoding
- UTF8
- Contact
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Point of contact Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice
Type of resource
- Resource scope
- Document
- Name
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nonGeographicDataset
Alternative metadata reference
- Title
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Geoscience Australia - short identifier for metadata record with
uuid
- Citation identifier
- eCatId/65393
- Date info (Revision)
- 2018-04-22T08:22:32
- Date info (Creation)
- 2007-09-11T00:00:00
Metadata standard
- Title
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AU/NZS ISO 19115-1:2014
Metadata standard
- Title
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ISO 19115-1:2014
Metadata standard
- Title
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ISO 19115-3
- Title
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Geoscience Australia Community Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-1:2014
- Edition
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Version 2.0, September 2018
- Citation identifier
- https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/122551