Elon Musk

AUSTRALIA’S gas infrastructure can store the same amount of energy as six billion Tesla Powerwall batteries, according to a report released this week by Australia’s peak gas industry bodies.

The prominence accorded that claim in the report entitled Gas Vision 2050 was a response to Tesla founder Elon Musk’s offer to cure South Australia’s power shortages in 100 days using his company’s Powerwall battery systems.

Inferring that battery systems were not the answer, the gas lobby report says that if there were gas-fired power stations available in Australia, there is enough stored gas to generate six billion times the power held in one Powerwall.

Talk of that Musk proposal has gone quiet after an initial burst of publicity, but the issue of power generation and blackouts remains a political football that is firmly in play.

The gas lobby report outlines a vision for gas’s future. It comes at a time when the gas industry is being accused of creating energy shortages in Australia by committing to export too much of our gas reserves.

To be fair to the gas industry, their enthusiasm for locking up the majority of Australia’s gas reserves in export contracts that were counter to the overall national interest, followed a series of dismal policy failures by state and federal governments as they chased votes by frolicing with the Greens and other fairies at the bottom of the garden.

Lack of a coherent and stable energy policy has deterred investors who would otherwise secure the capital to build new power stations and secure the fuel to run them.

The report outlines a scenario that on a hot summer day in December 2050 power blackouts would be “a distant memory”.

Let’s hope they are right because it looks like there are a few dark, sticky summer nights and festering fridges to come between now and then.

The gas lobby suggests that public transport within the city of 2050 will be largely powered using hydrogen to run trains, ferries, driverless cars or drones. Goods delivery will be via quiet, pollution free biogas-fuelled trucks.

According to Gas Vision 2050 there are 380,000 gas vehicles in Australia today. According to official VFACTS sales figures, 14 LPG vehicles have been sold in Australia so far this year.

The year 2050 is a long way off so there is plenty of time for that to change, and for Elon Musk to build six billion Powerwall batteries.

By Daniel Cotterill