good posts smurf. what do you think is the best way to secure basic electricity needs? obviously transport is whole other debate.
is it possible to export electricity overseas? i like the idea of a nuclear australia exporting energy.
A few points..
1. I think we'll need to use electricity wherever possible in preference to oil etc. Nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal etc all produce electricity, not liquid fuels, so that makes electricity the only real long term option for consuming devices.
2. How to generate it depends on the timeframe. Oil's gone now in terms of economic viability. Gas will probably be next. Coal depends on what happens about climate change - my guess being not much once peak oil seriously hits.
The timing for gas to get expensive varies depending on who you listen to and what assumptions you make. The general notion though is that gas in 2030 will be roughly where oil is now in terms of its depletion and production profile - at or very near the peak. However, with higher demand (vehicles etc converted to use it) the point where demand exceeds supply ought to come sooner than that. Either way it's well within the 30+ year lifespan of a new power station so it's now as far as proper planning is concerned.
So I'd say in the short term use anything other than oil. As for the long term, don't build any more gas-fired plants for baseload unless it's for a temporary use (eg a mine with a limited life and no real power alternative). To keep building them commits us to a rather large problem whenever gas does peak - these plants are virtually impossible to convert to any other fuel, much harder than the oil-fired plants of the 70's were (and they still did more than enough economic damage).
So, in short, it's nuclear, coal and renewables. The most attractive renewables being geothermal, solar thermal and large scale hydro (critical due to storage and the ability to precisely control output). Any other renewable is limited to a moderate contribution for technical and/or economic reasons although wind is nonetheless attractive since it's cheap.
As for exporting it, no but yes. Exporting actual electricity is problematic due to transmission losses. We don't link, say, Perth and Adelaide for that reason alone. So running cables under the ocean doesn't really work in terms of the distances that would be required.
But there's another way and we're already doing it to some extent.
Tasmania took it further than just about anywhere (a consequence of the state's relative lack of other resources and geographic isolation), to the point that 20th Century Tasmanian economics, state development and politics can be largely condensed to two words - "hydro-industrialisation".
It was a pretty simple strategy. Develop power, power and more power. Bring in raw materials from wherever, apply that power to energy-intensive processing, then export whatever product was produced. To this day, the resultant activity still accounts for about two thirds of the state's exports.
New Zealand, South America, Canada all have done much the same (also with hydro power). To a lesser extent Victoria and NSW have done it with coal-fired power although never to the extent of becoming the state's major means of economic development (though Victoria sure did try pretty hard to make it that way for a while).
So yes, you can export electricity but not directly. Regardless of the source of generation, if you wanted to export electricity from Australia then simply building a few big smelters and ending the eport of unprocessed ores would be the easy way. Be warned that it's a political minefield though...