A fascinating story is developing in South Australia’s energy demands.
This is where BHP steps in. The world’s biggest miner owns Olympic dam in South Australia. This mine is one of the largest mines in the world filled with copper, gold and uranium.The mine is supposed to drive the state’s economy in the coming decades. With estimates of $1 trillion, the mine can drive the growth of SA’s economy, jobs and population. In fact, Roxby Downs, a town near Olympic Dam was created to support this and has seen one of the biggest property boom in recent times.
One of the biggest needs is the demand for energy for the mine to operate. But the recent news is that there is a much greater need for this energy, upto 690 MW per year within 10 years to expand the mine. This incidentally is half of the energy requirement of the entire city of Adelaide!
This brings to question the source of power. The Greens in SA believe that the state can become a “greenhouse pariah” due to Olympic dam.
As we have seen before, Geothermal energy has an interesting future. We know that the hot rocks can generate energy with the promise of no fuel, no emissions, no waste.
I recently attended the Clean Tech session of the 12 part Climate Change 2030 seminars at Adelaide University. One of the discussions was on the Geothermal projects in South Australia. It was claimed that Adelaide is the center of the world in terms of Geothermal projects and technologies.
The speaker, Prof. Richard Hillis, who is a director at Petratherm talked about the entire issue as an optimization problem. The parameters for success for different companies were hot rocks, nearer to the grid, depth of drilling, or near to a major consumer. Each company is working on a different paradigm.
But, there is a great new opportunity for Geothermal producers to supply the “no emission” energy to this large consumer. The race is on.
