Australia 2020 electricity from natural gas falls 4.6pc

The volume of electricity in Australia generated by natural gas dropped by 4.6pc on the year in 2020, and by a larger degree than the decline in electricity consumption last year from Covid-19.

The volume of electricity generated by black coal-fired plants shrank by 6.8pc over the same period, official data showed.

But natural gas accounted for generating around 20pc Australia's electricity in 2020, a market share that has maintained relatively consistent over 2015-20, according to the 2020 Australian Energy Statistics (AES) from the Australian government's department of industry, science, energy and resources (DISER).

Natural gas maintained its market share as a fuel source for power generation because of higher generation volumes in Western Australia where it accounted for more than 61pc of power generation, compared with around 53pc in 2015, the 2020 AES showed.

Natural gas-fired generation in Western Australia in 2015-20 accounted for more than half of Australia's total gas fired power generation, compared with less than 40pc in 2015, the latest official data showed.

The use of natural gas in the national electricity market, which covers eastern Australia, has fallen in recent years to around 41pc of power generation from all natural gas-fired plants across Australia in 2020 from more than 55pc in 2015. Gas-fired generation in the Northern Territory exceeded 8pc last year from under 5pc in 2015, the AES data showed.

The steady market share of natural gas as a fuel source in Australia over the past six years was achieved during a period when the share of electricity generated from renewable sources exceeded 24pc across Australia compared with around 14pc in 2015, and this has largely been driven by higher generation from wind and solar sources. Wind and solar sources together generated more than 17pc of Australia's electricity last year compared with around 7pc in 2015, the AES data showed.

The rise in the share of renewables has come at the expense of coal-fired power generation, which has seen its share of fuel sources drop to less than 54pc last year from almost 64pc in 2015, the data showed. The decline in the share of coal-fired power generation is largely from brown coal, which is entirely located in the state of Victoria. The share of brown coal fell to less than 13pc in 2020 from almost 20pc in 2015, while black coal-fired power has fallen from around 44pc to 41pc over the same period.

The operator of Australia's power and gas markets the Australian Energy Market Operator said in May that Eastern Australia was on track to have 90pc of electricity generation from renewable sources by 2040 .

Australia-based utility EnergyAustralia is bringing forward the scheduled closure of its 1,480MW brown coal-fired Yallourn power plant in Victoria to 2028 from 2032, partly because of the rise in the share of renewables.

By Kevin Morrison

Australian electricity generation statitsics by fuel source for 2020 GWh Fuel type 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2019 vs 2020 dif % &#177; Black coal 111,670 115,400 120,917 120,618 116,642 108,753 -6.8 Brown coal 50,531 46,957 38,252 35,937 33,198 34,182 3.0 Natural gas 49,705 48,110 55,088 51,465 55,711 53,124 -4.6 Total non-renewable 218,070 216,185 219,529 212,921 210,278 200,566 -4.6 Wind 11,833 13,040 13,211 16,262 19,472 22,607 16.1 Total solar 6,195 7,440 8,918 12,333 18,297 23,843 30.3 Total renewable 35,914 42,033 39,438 49,711 55,622 64,667 16.3 Total 253,984 258,219 258,967 262,633 265,901 265,232 -0.2 % black coal 43.97 44.69 46.69 45.93 43.87 41.00 % brown coal 19.90 18.18 14.77 13.68 12.49 12.89 % natural gas 19.57 18.63 21.27 19.60 20.95 20.03 % renewable 14.14 16.28 15.23 18.93 20.92 24.38 Source: AES, DISER

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