Energy Futures for Australia

Project 2.1

Project objectives

Specifically, the Australia 21 research project seeks to address the following questions:

• Indicate what Australian society might anticipate with respect to the need for reductions in global, and therefore Australian, reductions in emissions over the 21st century

• Identify what can be achieved in Australia by way of deep cuts in emissions through the application of improved efficiencies through currently available and/or foreseeably prospective technology development

• Model the possible pathways to achieving deep cuts in Australia’s greenhouse-gas emissions, bearing in mind the constraints presented by factors such as existing capital stock, refurbishment cycles, capital investment cycles, competing uses for land and water, and anticipated increases in population, production and consumption

• Identify the regional, industrial and wider societal impacts of the various pathways modelled

• Identify the principal policy choices that confront decision-makers in government and business, and develop criteria that will assist with decision-making

• Identify the legislative, regulatory and commercial frameworks that need to be introduced to enable new and emerging technologies to enter the market in a seamless and timely manner

• Identify the key public attitudinal factors that will limit the acceptability of any relevant technologies, and the issues that would need to be addressed in order to establish appropriate levels of public confidence

• Achieve a step-function improvement in understanding of climate risk: the specific, predictable impacts of different levels of global warming, and through this

• Enable the economic benefits of avoided climate change to be estimated, and

• Facilitate choices regarding the balance of effort between mitigation and adaptation measures

• Develop improved econometric modelling tools to enable modelling encompassing all sectors and regions, and providing at least a thirty-year forward look

• Develop a fully documented methodology for integrating energy futures analyses encompassing energy supply and demand; climate change and climate risk; emerging energy technologies, economic well-being; societal implications of energy choices, and institutional and governance opportunities and constraints.

• Identify research gaps and undertake scoping studies to map out the means of filling those gaps.