Energy Technology Innovation Strategy (ETIS)

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Summary of the Energy Technology Innovation Strategy (PDF 471KB)

Overview

Victoria is facing significant environmental challenges to the economic advantages it derives from utilisation of its very low-cost brown coal resources.

The State accounts for 22 percent of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions, and approximately 52 percent of these arise from the use of brown coal for electricity generation in the State.

As the key stakeholder for the Victorian community, the Government is seeking to deliver two key policy objectives:

• To contain greenhouse gas emissions from the supply and use of energy in order to develop over time a sustainable energy sector; and
• To drive improvements in energy efficiency and facilitate investment in sustainable energy supply sources to support the continuing competitiveness of Victoria's industrial base.

• $72 million towards large scale sustainable energy demonstration projects that will position Victoria as a world leader in the fight against climate change.
• $110 million fund to establish new large-scale, pre-commercial Carbon Capture Storage (CCS) demonstration projects, as part of $127.4 million to secure Victoria's clean coal future.

• Funding for two Victorian large scale pre-commercial brown coal demonstration projects:

• $50 million for a 400MW $750 million power generation plant that will demonstrate a Victorian owned and developed “integrated drying and gasification combined cycle” (IDGCC) technology. The Commonwealth Government has also committed up to $100 million to this project.


• $30 million for a $369 million coal drying and carbon capture project at Hazelwood Power Station. The Commonwealth Government has also committed up to $50 million to this project.


• Up to $50 million has been committed for a 154MW $420 million solar power electricity generation plant to be built by Solar Systems Generation in North-West Victoria. The Commonwealth Government has also committed up to $79.5 million to this project.

• Around $29 million in Government support has been committed for the Centre for Energy and Greenhouse Technologies (CEGT) to continue their vital work assisting emerging technologies to reach commercialisation.

• A $12 million grants round for high quality brown coal research and development (R&D) proposals that can leverage input from industry and the Commonwealth.

• $10 million to support Sustainable Energy R&D, including renewable energy, energy efficiency and clean distributed generation.

• $4 million has been allocated to a trial of carbon dioxide capture and storage in the Otway Basin.

• $2.2 million has been allocated to support construction of a pre-commercial plant demonstrating coal drying technology known as Mechanical Thermal Expression (MTE).

• Facilitate a coordinated approach to the advancement of low-emissions energy technologies (LETs) to their commercial-ready points.

• Support the progression of low-emissions energy technologies particularly where a market gap has been identified through their innovation processes by:

• Research & Development: Stimulating development of new low-emissions energy technologies to technical proof-of-concept


• Demonstration: Enabling the progression of the most promising of these through product proof-of-concept and initial scale-up


• Enabling demonstration of the most promising of these at pre-commercial scale to prove 'bankability' of the technology (i.e. an acceptably-low technical risk for commercial implementation)


• Promote leading-edge technology capacity in Victoria to underpin local and export market growth to benefit the economy and the environment.