Australia needs to invest around $50 billion in electricity generation over the next decade to meet rising energy demand.
TRUenergy as already committed around $1 billion to the development of low and zero emission energy generation technologies.
Launched in March 2009, TRUenergy Tallawarra is Australia’s most efficient large-scale gas-fired power station. A state-of-the-art, super efficient natural gas power station, TRUenergy Tallawarra emits up to 65 percent less greenhouse emissions than traditional coal fired power stations.
Developed at a cost of $430 million, the 435 megawatt power station produces a reliable energy supply for up to 200,000 homes and businesses across NSW using combined cycle generation technology.
See more information on TRUenergy Tallawarra.
In 2007, TRUenergy further expanded its renewable energy portfolio through a strategic $57 million commitment to a joint venture with Petratherm, a leading developer of geothermal technology in Australia and overseas.
While Petratherm’s technology is yet to be commercialised, TRUenergy is backing the company’s ‘Paralana’ project, an initiative to extract renewable energy from ‘hot rocks’ located 3.6 kilometres underground.
Should the project prove successful, the Paralana site will be capable of producing up to 520 megawatts of emission free electricity, equivalent to supplying over a quarter of a million homes.
Visit the Petratherm website
TRUenergy has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with Ignite Energy Resources (IER) to transform low-efficiency brown coals directly into high value oils and cleaner coal products.
The first step in this project will be development of a commercial demonstration plant that will utilise IER’s direct coal-to-oil process to transform brown coal from TRUenergy Yallourn’s brown coal mine.
Earlier studies have predicted that the cleaner coal products produced using this technology will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent when used for power generation. At present, TRUenergy Yallourn utilises low-efficiency brown coal, which produces higher greenhouse gas emissions when burnt as a result of its high moisture content. By converting this fuel source into high-value oil and coal products, IER and TRUenergy hope to provide a cleaner, secure energy source, while at the same time allowing Victoria and other economies to continue utilising this abundant fuel source.
In 2007, TRUenergy entered into a A$292 million Development Agreement with Melbourne-based Solar Systems to build one of the world’s most efficient concentrated solar power plants.
To be built near Mildura in Victoria, the 150MW plant will utilise concentrated solar technology, known as ‘heliostats’ to generate zero emissions energy for over 70,000 homes and businesses. Solar Systems’ unique solar technology concentrates sunlight onto a small area of high efficiency photovoltaics (PV) using mirrors, significantly reducing the overall cost per unit of electricity when compared to conventional, photovoltaic energy generation methods.
Opting for concentrated photovoltaics as a new source of renewable energy will also reduce greenhouse emissions by approximately 400,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
In addition, TRUenergy has invested A$40 million to develop further solar energy projects across Australia and Asia.
Project update - On 7 September 2009, Stephen Longley and David McEvoy of PricewaterhouseCoopers were appointed as joint and several Administrators of Solar Systems.
The Administrators are undertaking an immediate assessment of the operations and financial position of the companies with a view to continuing the operations on a reduced scale in order to restructure and sell the business as a going concern.
TRUenergy has taken a $15 million equity stake in GridX to accelerate the company’s expanding cogeneration projects. GridX offers ‘distributed generation’, a sustainable energy solution for businesses that lowers greenhouse gas emissions at the same time as increasing reliability.
GridX uses gas-fired generators to produce electricity and recover waste heat for heating and cooling. This solution can reduce the carbon intensity of energy supplied to a customer by 50 percent compared with conventional energy purchased from the grid.