It’s 2050 and when Australians fire up their computers or start their cars, the lightest element in the universe, hydrogen, now provides much of the power: green, safe, efficient and socially acceptable, it’s become the fuel of choice.

The frightening phenomenon of global warming is at last showing signs of abating as the world starts to get on top of greenhouse emissions and vast stretches of restored forests and savannahs begin to suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

In Australia, coal now forms the backbone of the clean energy economy, with supplies sufficient for several centuries. Hydrogen is drawn from a multiplicity of sources – coal, coalbed methane, natural gas, and water, to name but four. All now play potent roles in the national primary energy mix.

Solar energy has grown strongly but is still a relatively small part of the mix, though it too helps produce hydrogen. Windpower has reached its limit, curbed by community aesthetic concerns. Hot rocks furnish steam to spin electrical turbines, and dramatic improvements in transmission deliver power over long distances with less loss.

A network of pipes criss-crosses the continent, delivering hydrogen and natural gas for use, and carbon dioxide for storage. Northern Australia’s new nuclear reactor is producing safe power, despite lively controversy over its construction and waste disposal.

These are among the scenarios discussed when three of the nation’s leading energy researchers – the chief executives of Australia’s energy-focused Cooperative Research Centres (CRCs) – took out their crystal balls recently.

Amid global uncertainty over oil and gas pricing and supply, carbon trade and pricing, anxieties about the greenhouse effect, and renascent demands for nuclear energy and renewables, Australia is ideally positioned as a country with enough energy choices to be able to afford good decisions.

With bountiful supplies of black and brown coal, natural gas, geothermal, solar electric, solar thermal, wind, biofuels, and uranium, as well as local options like microhydro, wave and tidal power, and salt ponds, it has an enviable edge in the low-cost, clean energy stakes. The debate is about balancing the mix as cost-effectively as possible.

The crucial driver, according to the three scientists, is that Australia’s total energy consumption will double by 2050 to sustain economic growth.

While come the middle of the century there may only be four million more Australians, demand for energy in industry, offices and households means the average citizen will consume substantially more energy than today to sustain their living standard - and the country will be a major net exporter of energy to the rest of the world.

Zero emissions

Driving the changes and new technologies that have swept the energy sector over recent years, and will continue to do so up until 2050, is the universal public concern and political pressure over climate change which increases steadily with each extreme weather event worldwide.

“Some greenhouse sceptics are talking about global cooling, but my guess is that within ten years they’ll have to eat their words,” said the head of Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technology Dr Peter Cook.

“Today’s policy drivers are going with the weight of scientific evidence from the International Panel on Climate Change.” And that means the energy sector is in for a transformation.

The Holy Grail in this industrial metamorphosis is “zero emissions” – an energy system, or systems, that delivers power without releasing carbon dioxide, methane or other climate-warmers and pollutants. Or as close to zero as human inventiveness can deliver and sensible economics afford.

Cook is upbeat about how long it will take to work the change. “People will be progressively implementing zero emissions technologies for power generation over the next 10-20 years.” However, he added that getting cars to zero emissions would be much harder. “A few would be running on hydrogen by then (2050), but most will probably be hybrids,” he said.

Holding back the switch to hydrogen as a fuel are some basic limitations: all countries, including Australia, lack the infrastructure – storage, pipelines and outlets – to deliver hydrogen to users across the continent and to capture and store the by-product carbon dioxide.

Technical hurdles, such as devising an efficient, safe way to store hydrogen for use without filling the entire car-boot with gas cylinders, also remain.

Nonetheless, Cook believes hydrogen is where the future lies – but it will be drawn primarily from fossil fuels: black coal, brown coal and natural gas. This implies a major move towards carbon capture and storage, or geosequestration.

“I’m confident that geosequestration will work,” he said. “After all, it uses well-established technologies and there are many hundreds of sites where natural gas is stored underground all round the world. We have to show that carbon dioxide can be stored indefinitely.

The real challenge will be to demonstrate to the public’s satisfaction this is a safe and cost effective way to store carbon.

“You can never say no risk about anything in science – or, indeed, life – but we can surely show it is a very low risk course of action. In short, geosequestration looks like a very reasonable way to tackle an intractable problem, especially when compared to the risks of doing nothing.”

To this end, Cooperative Research Centre for Coal in Sustainable Development chief executive Frank van Schagen adds that a limited way of thinking is to regard carbon dioxide as a “waste” product that has to be disposed of.

It is possible that valuable by-products can be developed from at least some carbon dioxide, which means it is kept out of the atmosphere (see below).

The future energy mix

Cooperative Research Centre for Clean Power from Lignite chief executive Peter Jackson thinks coal – both black and brown – will still comprise about half of Australia’s primary energy mix in 2050 because of its attractive price and large reserves – up to 700 years in the case of lignite.

But it will be used in processes that are far cleaner and more efficient than those used today.

“Nuclear energy, I’d rate as a wild card,” he said. “There is probably a ceiling on wind power imposed by public objections to the visual and noise pollution aspects. And there isn’t a lot of scope to increase hydropower in Australia now.”

Cook foresees solar energy and…Click here to read Part 2