Charles Darwin University Media Release
Charles Darwin University Senior Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering Dr Hooman Mehdizadeh Rad, says that:
“Energy security is often overlooked in the net zero debate, but recent events have made it impossible to ignore. Many countries still depend heavily on imported fossil fuels for electricity and transport, and that dependence creates real vulnerability. The ongoing tensions in the Middle East are a stark reminder of this. Even the threat of disruption around key routes like the Strait of Hormuz can push fuel prices up almost overnight, affecting economies far beyond the region.
“This is why the transition to renewable energy is more than an environmental goal, it is a strategic necessity. Unlike fossil fuels, renewable resources like solar are locally available. Countries with strong renewable potential can generate electricity domestically and reduce their dependence on imports. This also enables the electrification of transport through EVs, linking mobility directly to the local energy system. Australia, particularly the Northern Territory, has a clear advantage here given its abundant solar resource.
“Hydrogen extends this advantage further. Electricity is difficult to export over long distances, but hydrogen can act as an energy carrier, produced from excess solar power, then stored and shipped to other countries. It also supports sectors that are harder to electrify directly, complementing EVs and contributing to a more flexible and diversified energy system.
“What makes hydrogen especially powerful is its ability to be stored for weeks or even months and used in an entirely different location. There are currently no other practical options to export renewable energy at this scale across continents. In that sense, hydrogen could enable a global renewable energy trade, much like fossil fuels are traded today.
“From both an economic and strategic standpoint, this presents a significant opportunity for Australia. We can diversify our energy exports beyond traditional fossil fuels, while importing nations reduce their dependence on volatile supply routes. Paired with growing EV uptake locally, these pathways together strengthen energy security by diversifying both how energy is produced and how it is used.”
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The installation of electricity generating equipment along every railway line should be an essential public infrastructure project for regional & remote communities to harvest benefits from alternative energy generation projects currently exporting to the national grid.
Regional Australia has been ignored by Macquarie Street & Canberra Bubble Parliaments for too long, so now isa the time to provide ”free energy” to industries prepared to re-locate to a suitable location at least 250km from a major coastal city. This proposal plus the simultaneous decentralisation of government departments would reduce the population pressure on the Sydney Basin, thus hopefully reducing demand from residential real estate purchasers.
Why are fossil fuels still a topic for debate? The fact is society will never be free of fossil fuel. We can become more fossil fuel efficient and so we should, but zero use of fossil fuel is a nonsense.
jonangel:
Maybe the debate is about how much of our fossil fuel use can be replaced by energy and materials from other sources.
jonangel indulges yet again in magical thinking. Fossil fuels are a finite resource; once extracted – whether oil, gas or coal – and converted, combusted, they’re gone. There’s no recycling a tank of petrol or diesel, just as there’s no reconstituting the kindling and wood just burnt on the campfire.
Why are they still a topic of debate, he asks? Perhaps if he stopped watching the cartoons on the telly and started paying attention to what’s going on in the world he might just, just, begin to comprehend why they are a topic for discussion.
Like, for starters, there have been ~30 UN Climate Change Conferences since the first in 1995, every succeeding one making the point in more strident terms as the data comes in that the ongoing use of fossil fuels is likely to lead to something akin to killing the planet.
But I guess if you’re a guy like jonangel, and he’s not alone in this, where preference is for ignorance over knowledge, for subjective opinion over a viewpoint informed by science and rational analysis, and – it might be added – fiercely protective of that subjective opinion even if it’s wildly wrong, then you may as well give up – people of that quotient are just not worth arguing with or endeavouring to educate on the realities as they present.
Why are fossil fuels a topic for discussion? Because their ongoing use underpins every environmental and ecological disaster currently unfolding at frightening rapidity across the globe.
Over to you, jonangel, if you can pull yourself away from the cartoons on the telly.
Logical, but counter intuitive to most Australians fed a diet over a generation of fossil fuel and anti-renewable agitprop by our RW MSM and ecosystem led by you know whom; ditto UK and US.
Uranium is also a fossil fuel and I doubt we will run out of that. Yes, coal, oil and gas, we are told are finite, but we were told that thirty years ago and we are still finding it.
But I’d suggest, that if coal, oil and gas are really finite, by the time they are really erased from our planet humanity we be long gone.
Most, if not all things are finite, nothing is ever lasting, evolution and recorded history proves it and that includes us.
jonangel, yet again, you fail on the most basic of facts. Uranium is not a fossil fuel, it’s a metal. Fossil fuels are carbon-based organic compounds derived from living organisms.
Pretty basic stuff, the sort of detail that a high-school student would know.
Says who? Uranium is an amalgam of more the one component, that is why it is refined, we only want on part of it. Added to this”carbo-based organic compounds” aren’t derived from “living organisms”, they are derived from dead ones, or so we are told.
I would remind you, matter cannot be destroyed, it only changes it’s form, soil is a fossil fuel, it feeds us. Water is composed of a number of elements, as is air.
You problem, is you take to much notice of your search engine and fail to think things through.
Every thing on this planet is interconnected,
But seeing as you mentioned it, tell us, just what is a “metal”?
Thanks for the laugh, jonangel…. you have now totally confirmed you’re a dunce, and, to spare myself the unprofitable consequences of engaging with idiots, I won’t be replying or posting in respect of anything you have to say here from now on. Chao, amigo.
Good by and good luck, I think you’ll need it.
Canguro, it seems you have friends at AIMN so as to get your poor choices removed.
You really are a wimp.
jonangel, reluctant as I am to respond to your puerile offerings, but suffice to say that you qualify, in all respects, as a troll…. the bottom-feeders of internet intercourse.