Local Generation - Local Consumption
The CSIRO, energy suppliers and manufacturers are researching ways of using solar, wind, hydro, biomass and other methods of generating electricity. There is also interest in generating in the places where the energy is to be used.

As centrally generated electricity becomes more expensive, Gloucester's potential for using these non-fossil sources becomes more economically viable.

The Gloucester Project is already looking for partners for initiatives in local electricity generation.

Lowering the use of costly electricity
The Gloucester Project will also be promoting energy-use-auditing in households, businesses and farms, so as to reduce usage and costs.

Distributed energy
Distributed energy refers to clean local generation and demand management at customer sites. These technologies provide an 'early action' approach to greenhouse-gas reductions because they are available now. They can be introduced into present-day grids without special network technology or market developments ( virtual power station).

Energy is a key determinant of Australia's future economic growth and prosperity yet global warming threatens to change all aspects of life on earth – both socially and economically. Ongoing human activity has increased the intensity of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) to the atmosphere and most climate scientists believe that the environmental imbalance and unnatural warming is one of the most significant challenges facing the world today.

Recognising these issues, energy reform is high on the agendas of both Federal and State Governments. Australia must develop science-based greenhouse gas mitigation strategies for the transport and stationary energy sectors that allow us to remain globally competitive (read more - energy overview).

Biomass
[source: A report for the RIRDC/ FWPRDC L & W Australia/ MDBC Joint Venture Agroforestry Program (in conjunction with the Australian Greenhouse Office)

Biomass is organic matter originally derived from plants, produced through the process of photosynthesis, and which is not fossilised (such as coal). Biomass can act as a store of chemical energy to provide heat, electricity and transportation fuels, or as a chemical feedstock for bio-based products.

Biomass resources include wood from plantation forests, residues from agricultural and forest production, and organic waste streams from industry, livestock, food production, and general human activities. Examples are wood chips, sawdust, cotton ginning trash, nut shells, manure and human sewage.

Bioenergy is essentially renewable or carbon neutral. Carbon dioxide released during the energy conversion of biomass (such as combustion, gasification, pyrolysis, anaerobic digestion or fermentation) circulates through the biosphere, and is reabsorbed in equivalent stores of biomass through photosynthesis.

Bioenergy plants can range from small domestic heating systems to multi-megawatt industrial plants requiring several hundred thousand tonnes of biomass fuel per annum each. There are also a variety of technologies to release and use the energy contained in biomass, such as combustion technologies that are well proven and widely used world-wide, and more efficient gasification plants that are currently at the demonstration stage but with potential for significant cost reduction as the technology is commercialised in multiple plants (read more - biomass).