About the assessment
On 1 March 2010, the Hon Martin Ferguson AM MP, Minister for Resources and Energy released the first edition of the Australian Energy Resource Assessment.
The assessment, undertaken by Geoscience Australia (GA) and the Australian Bureau for Agriculture and Resource Economics (ABARE), is the first of its kind, providing a national prospectus of Australia's energy resources.
For the first time it brings together a comprehensive understanding of our rich energy resource endowment, integrating geoscience and long term economic energy outlooks with common terms and definitions.
The assessment examines identified and potential energy resources and considers the factors likely to influence Australia's energy future in a low-carbon economy to 2030.
The assessment:
- shows Australia has an abundance of energy resources accounting for 2.4 per cent of the world's proven resources
- demonstrates the rich diversity of both non-renewable (coal, uranium and increasingly gas) and renewable energy resources (wind, geothermal, solar and bioenergy)
- reviews and assesses the factors likely to influence the use of Australia's energy resources to 2030 including the need for technologies to develop and extract energy more efficiently and cleanly from existing and new energy sources, particularly renewable energy
- confirms Australia's future energy use will require continued use of fossil fuels (coal, oil and increasingly gas) and renewable energy sources, notably wind, is expected to become increasingly significant.
GA and the Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics (BREE) will undertake the next edition of the Assessment, expected to be released in 2013.
More information
Further information may be obtained from the Geoscience Australia website.