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Electrifying opportunities in Australia!
In these troubled financial times, more and more skilled workers in countries like Ireland, the UK, India, the USA and China are considering migration to Australia, following the example of millions before them. In days gone by, like after World War 2, Australia was desperate to boost its population and needed plenty of muscle to get huge projects off the ground, like the Snowy Mountains Scheme, for example. This vast project was designed to provides irrigation for farms and feeds hydroelectricity into the national grid. In the same spirit, in Australia today, there are some landmark developments in alternative energy that would be very interesting to intending skilled immigrants.
For a country with vast reserves of coal (brown and black), uranium and other natural resources that can be ‘burned’ to produce electricity (although nuclear power currently is not seen as an option), there’s a lot of alternative generation going on. It’s compulsory actually. A strong motivating factor is that the Federal Government has passed a law that 20% of electricity generated in Australia by must become alternative, from climate friendly sources. So what sort of projects are under way?
One example is the Hot Rock company’s geothermal project near Warrnambool in Victoria, which could power up to 1 million homes if recent results are proven.
Hot Rock plans to build a one-megawatt pilot plant in 2011, has released a report showing its inferred and indicated geothermal resource at its Koroit project in the Otway Basin could be as great as 67,000 petajoules.
The report, produced from seismic data and 14 previously drilled wells, shows the indicated geothermal resource is about 7600 petajoules while the inferred resource is 59,000 petajoules.
Although, it is very early days for the project, which must still drill its own wells and measure flow rates before the reserve can be classified as proven. The indicated resource, if proven, could support a 100-megawatt power plant while the inferred resource would be enough to generate 1100 megawatts - or enough power for 1 million Australian homes annually.
Managing director Mark Elliott said the project was near energy infrastructure, meaning it could be fed into the energy grid without major power losses via long transmission lines.
”We are planning to drill proof-of-concept wells into this resource early next year with a view to completing testing and a feasibility study by the end of 2010,” he said. ”The resource potential at Koroit is large and if converted into reserves has the potential of producing significant power from the Koroit project alone.”
The Koroit project uses a sedimentary geothermal system that does not require artificial stimulation to enhance the flow of water.
As more geothermal, wind, solar and wave-power projects are initiated, the opportunities for appropriately qualified and experienced skilled trades people and professionals will no doubt multiply. And yet, among these high tech energy solutions, it is also possible to come across a alternatives that are somewhat more traditional.
SYD Shea, an old man now, is producing what he believes could help save the planet and create great agricultural wealth.
Shea is professor of environmental management at Perth’s University of Notre Dame, and it’s not too much to say he is obsessed with the subject of biochar, which is basically another word for just charcoal. The answer is in Syd’s 200 litre (44-gallon ) drums.
One makes biochar by heating organic material such as wood (or just about anything else) while limiting the amount of oxygen in the process so it doesn’t actually burn. That’s why Shea’s drums are sealed with dried mud, and no smoke is allowed to escape. It’s not a new process. Amazonian Indians were creating biochar about 2000 years ago to fertilise their crops, and it has been popular among Japanese farmers for centuries.
What might be novel and of importance to today’s planet, is that Shea contends the ancient process occurring in his drums leads to three exciting results.
- The char that is produced has locked within it virtually all the carbon that would otherwise escape into the atmosphere, and it will stay locked away for hundreds, and in many cases, thousands of years.
- The stuff can then be returned to the soil through tilling, as a fertiliser significantly boosting crop production.
- Furthermore, in the production process, a gas is produced that can be captured and used for heating, running motors and generating power.
Shea envisions large, modern plants producing millions of tonnes of biochar, using
- purpose-grown trees or crops as fuel,
- the huge amount of waste generated by blue gum plantations.
- the straw left behind after wheat harvesting across Australia.
Indeed, just about any form of waste, including manure, can be converted into biochar.
Shea and two partners - Melbourne-based engineer and investor Peter Burgess and West Australian grain and sheep farmer Ian Stanley - have established what they call the Rainbow Bee Eater strategy to push their beliefs. They figure that with official support they could lock away 20 million tonnes of carbon and generate 12,000 gigawatts of low-cost energy a year - one-third of Australia’s renewable energy target.
Governments everywhere are desperately trying to work out how to meet greenhouse targets by reducing carbon emissions and they seek alternative and renewable sources of energy. It would be reasonable to opine that there’d be great excitement about the potential of biochar.
The Australian Government is spending large amounts of money investigating simply burying carbon. The official term is ‘geo-sequestration’ and it’s mainly intended to bury carbon produced by coal-fired power stations. Biochar is simply another method of sequestering carbon in soil, but with a specific and valuable benefit. It’s easier than pumping carbon thousands of metres below the earth’s surface, and it enriches crops and produces an incredibly useful and valuable gas.
Problem is, government support for biochar is at best muted. Early this year federal Agriculture Minister Tony Burke made it clear he wasn’t an enthusiast. “There are many different technologies that can be used to deliver (carbon sequestration), and biochar is one of them. It’s untested. It’s unproven.”
Unfortunately, the Government’s emissions trading policy doesn’t include agriculture until 2015, so biochar isn’t top of mind in the complex accounting for carbon capture. But is it untested and unproven, as Burke claimed? Up to a point - that point being that the Government won’t stump up the money required for exhaustive testing and proving.
However, the NSW Department of Primary Industries has been running biochar trials since 2006, and has declared that it has scientifically demonstrated it can increase soil carbon levels while improving crop productivity and soil health.
Environmental scientist and former Australian of the year Professor Tim Flannery is a major enthusiast. He says biochar looks too good to be true, “but I’ve looked at it from every angle and I fail to see the fault in the system”.
The CSIRO is more cautious, and has produced a paper emphasising that more research is required to ensure biochar’s safe production and use. However, that same paper states that “due to its high chemical stability, high carbon content and its potential to reside in soil over decades, centuries, and even up to millennia, biochar applications have the potential to turn into a long-term carbon sink. Thus, biochar could play an important role in helping to sequester carbon from the atmosphere and partially offset greenhouse gas emissions produced by the burning of fossil fuels”.
Meanwhile, Syd Shea tends his hot 200 litre drums and dreams of what Australia and the world could achieve if only political decision-makers would see the value to today’s world that resides in one of the oldest technologies going around.
What is clear, is that Australia’s burgeoning alternative energy industry offers a diverse range of careers, both to resident Australians and also to skilled immigrants, wherever they now reside. It seems likely that many business opportunities will arise from work and investigation in these areas. It’s a field of business that has attracted entrepreneurs and will continue to attract them to look at Australia as fertile fields for their imagination, investment and enterprise.
Unsurprisingly, the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) is targeting skills in the IT and engineering sectors and is giving state/territory governments and private employers greater scope for nominating skilled migrants to fill jobs they need filled most urgently.
Australia’s urgent need for skilled immigration makes it a very good time to investigate numerous long-term opportunities that would enhance their careers and improve their lifestyles.
Clearly, alternative energy also provides opportunities to business people and entrepreneurs keen to establish small (and large) businesses in Australia.
Anyone thinking of moving to Australia, can consult an online Australian visa advisor, to ascertain how in demand your trade or profession is, simply by checking out the priority lists, and then accessing a visa assessment.
All this can be achieved by selecting a reputable, proven and successful Australian visa advisory specialist.
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