Energy in Victoria
Brown coal is one of the largest contributors to Australia's total domestic greenhouse gas emissions and a source of controversy for the country.
Initially, it was used only for public events - such as the Duke of Edinburgh's visit in 1867 and a night football match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in 1879 - and lighting in the theatre.
Other councils embraced Melbourne's initiative and streets in many nearby areas - such as Richmond, Essendon, Hawthorn and South Yarra - were also lit by electricity by the late 1890s.
Some councils set up their own distribution networks, including Footscray (1911), Brunswick (1912–13), Port Melbourne (1912–13), Preston (1912), Nunawading (1912), Northcote (1912), Coburg (1914), Heidelberg (1914), Williamstown (1915–16) and Doncaster (1916).
Their findings were then submitted to the Parliament of Victoria for funding, with the more cost effective project[8] approved in 1922,[9] and the Rubicon Hydroelectric Scheme commenced in that year.
[10] The first electric tram in Melbourne was built in 1889 by the Box Hill and Doncaster Tramway Company Limited, an enterprise which failed in 1896.
Geelong B remained for a few more years being used for peak loads only, but closed in 1970 due to the much higher efficiency of the new power stations in the Latrobe Valley.
On 10 March 2021, EnergyAustralia announced that it will close the Yallourn Power Station in mid-2028, four years ahead of schedule, and instead build a 350 megawatt power-generating battery in the Latrobe Valley by the end of 2026.
[25] Victoria has historically been a net exporter of electricity, though interstate trade generally represents a relatively small proportion of total energy generation.
[26] As of 2022, the majority of electricity in Victoria is generated by three brown coal fired thermal power stations in the Latrobe Valley: Loy Yang A and B, and Yallourn.
As a result, in the early years of Victoria the state was dependent on black coal imports from New South Wales for its fuel needs.
[27] The ash constituents vary significantly across the region but various silicates and oxides (Mg, Fe, Al, Ca and Na) are typical.
The most recent expansion of hydropower in Victoria was the Bogong Power Station, a 95 MW extension to the Kiewa scheme completed in 2009.
The Snowy 2.0 pumped storage scheme in NSW will provide additional dispatchable hydroelectricity through interstate electricity interconnections.
Wind farms at Codrington, Challicum Hills and Portland were all built by private companies with State Government funding assistance.
The development of new wind farms in Victoria became much harder following the election of the Baillieu government who amended the planning scheme in August 2011 to give any landholder within two kilometres a power of veto over a project.
Three project proposals for offshore wind farms along the Gippsland coastline have received preliminary funding for design and feasibility work.
Wood-burning stoves are widely used in Victoria, though quantitative estimates are less accurate due to the lack of any centralized distribution network for wood.
As a result, the State Electricity Commission of Victoria used German technology to produce hard briquettes from Latrobe Valley brown coal.
These plants crushed, dried and pressed brown coal to extract the water, and form a hard fast-burning block that was easy to transport.
Briquette usage in Victoria dropped after the introduction of natural gas to the state, but the Morwell Energy Brix factory continued in operation until August 2014.
[62] These newer gas fields use undersea wellheads connected to the shore and production facilities with pipelines, minimising the visual impact on the coastline.
In Tasmania, the gas fueled the Bell Bay and Tamar Valley power stations until the completion of Basslink made them redundant.
[78] Production from the Bass Strait fields is declining, and AEMO has stated that Victoria, New South Wales, and Tasmania may face gas shortages during the 2020s.
[80] The Victorian state government has announced a roadmap to gradually phase out the use of natural gas due to supply, cost, and environmental issues, to be replaced with a mixture of electrification, biogas, and hydrogen from clean sources.
Modeling for the roadmap suggests that electrification is likely to take place over the 2020s and 2030s, with large-scale adoption of hydrogen to replace remaining gas usage more likely to begin in around 2040.
[82] To this end, in early 2024 the Victorian government announced amendments to planning regulations which essentially prohibit new gas connections for residential properties [83].
Oil was first discovered in the Gippsland Basin under Bass Strait by Esso Australia and BHP in March 1966 in what is now the Marlin field.
[86] As previously mentioned, town gas (a mixture of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and other hydrocarbon gases) was produced from black and brown coal through the 19th and 20th centuries.
[88] The project partners propose that a commercial-scale gasification operation would use carbon capture and storage to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emitted in the production process.
