Rather gas than wind, says Metgasco

New Metgasco managing director Peter Henderson believes gas is the answer to NSW’s insatiable appetite for electricity and makes no apology if that means people have to live within sight of well heads. He also says coal seam gas mining and agriculture could exist side by side.

“We can drill six wells from one drilling pad, around 110m by 110m. If you have one pad for every square kilometre, that’s 1% of the land, so it’s a very small footprint. The flow lines and such things that go between them can be built in such a way that they are not going to interfere with the farmer’s crops or grazing,” he said. “When we’re finished it goes. It does mean when the guy wakes up in the morning and looks out over his verandah, he may be seeing a wellhead a couple of hundred kilometres away. Undeniable. People will see wellheads. We’ll design them as small as we can and make them as aesthetically pleasing as we can but there are costs to this business too and we can’t deny that.”

Metgasco chief operations officer Mick O’Brien said their company’s planned gas-fired Richmond Valley Power Station will save as many carbon emissions as the wind farm that has been proposed for Glen Innes.

“Because we run 100% of the time and we only use two thirds of the emissions of a coal-fired station, we actually save the same amount of emissions as a wind farm because a wind farm only runs a third of the time and the rest of the time the power has to come out of the grid,” Mr O’Brien said. “And our sort of station occupies much less space than a wind farm.”

“People will complain about a wind farm being an eyesore, plus some of the time birds get hurt,” Mr Henderson said. “I used to work in solar energy because I was a real mad nut about alternative energy 35 years ago but I came to the conclusion that wind, wave and solar are lovely ideas but they’re peripheral and in an economy of 20 million people in Australia and the lifestyle we want they’re not even close to being able to provide (the amount of electricity Australia uses). I’ve been watching for 35 years and I really don’t think that is the answer. The community can say no to gas but if it says no to gas it’s saying yes to burning a whole lot more coal.

“I don’t think the community is saying it wants to reduce the quality of its life; it wants jobs for its sons and daughters.”

Mr O’Brien said people should cut back on their demand for electricity but even if they did, with population growth, Australia’s total energy demand is going to grow.

“We’ve got to find the best way to deliver that energy and price is part of that. One of the big issues is cost of living and the increase in energy prices are certainly doing that and the more of say wind power or solar power we put into the system the dearer that cost is and at the moment gas is really the only method of generating power that doesn’t slug you with a significant increase in cost and still gets you a reduction in CO2 emissions. It may be that in 10 years or 20 years time solar and wind are better then, then they take over from gas but at the moment to say swap to wind instead of our power station you’re paying three times as much. And you don’t save anything on greenhouse.

“We’re going to generate 30MW all the time, on a total site of 35 hectares and at a total cost less than $60 million.”

However, speaking to the Australia’s Clean Energy sector gala dinner of Clean Energy Week, Newspoll chief executive Martin O’Shannessy said Australia could not afford to wait for the government to act on climate change, and must instead capture strong public support for renewable energy sector by sidestepping government and speaking straight to consumers.

Referring to new data prepared by Newspoll for the Clean Energy Council, Mr O’Shannessy said more than 80% of Australians want to switch to renewable energy, and more than 40% are willing to pay more for it.

“Consumers are ready to enact a change towards Green Energy, and they are willing to pay for it,” Mr O’Shannessy said.

Figures released by the Clean Energy Council on Wednesday show that four of the top 20 postcodes for taking up solar energy in Australia are on the North Coast of NSW (Alstonville, Brunswick Heads, Ballina and Tweed).