Right now, natural gas represents a compelling opportunity to address climate change, and provide energy security to both Australia and the Asia Pacific.

While Australia is blessed with an abundance of other energy resources – coal, uranium, solar, wind, geothermal – a range of technological, practical, affordability and public acceptability reasons mean that most of these are unlikely to be providing competitively priced base load heating and power in significant quantities any time soon.

South Australian modelling shows that every 5,000 megawatts (MW) of wind power generation capacity requires approximately 2,100 MW of gas-fired power generation to ensure that a reliable supply of electricity is always available.

Aside from significant cost advantages over renewable power generation, natural gas also uses very little water and has a much smaller environmental footprint than that of renewable energy sources. Gas-fired power generation uses as little as half to 1/2000th of the water used per megawatt hour (MWh) of that used by an existing coal-fired power station. At the same time an average 1,000 MW natural gas power plant requires around 15 hectares of land, in comparison to about 6,000–8,000 hectares for solar and 8,000–14,000 hectares for wind.

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The good news is that Australia is already taking action with new natural gas power stations accounting for over 80 per cent of all new generation capacity in 2008 and 2009.

Power generation is the single largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in Australia. With a much lower greenhouse gas emission profile (as well as other pollutants such as sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, particulates and chemicals such as mercury), than coal-fired power generation, natural gas has a critical role to play in Australia’s future energy mix.

Depending on the technology used, natural gas actually emits between 50 and 70 per cent less carbon dioxide than is produced by an existing conventional coal-fired power station for the same amount of electricity.

Gas-fired power generation can be reliably and affordably delivered right now. This could achieve approximately 80 per cent of the carbon emission reductions that would be achieved by retro-fitting an existing coal-fired power plant with carbon capture and storage technology – an option not available in the foreseeable future.

To go a step further, if energy demand to 2050 was to be met by a combination of 20 per cent renewable energy (as per the expanded Renewable Energy Target) and natural gas, carbon emissions would drop by around 20 per cent, even while doubling the level of output.

Estimates of conventional and unconventional gas resources in Australia amount to approximately 400 trillion cubic feet (Tcf). To put this in perspective, 1 Tcf of gas provides enough energy to power a city of one million people for a period of 20 years.

With more than 250 years worth of natural gas at current rates of production, clearly natural gas is not going to be a short-term transitional fuel for Australia and our Asia Pacific neighbours. We have more than enough to meet our own local demands, while assisting the 60–70 per cent of the planet’s population that lives in the Asia Pacific region to continue to develop and evolve their economies for a cleaner and brighter future.