Sydney to go it alone as power producer  

The SMH has an article on plans to expand the use of cogeneration in the City of Sydney - Sydney to go it alone as power producer.

SYDNEY will become the first Australian city to start weaning itself off coal-fired electricity, with the business district and much of the inner city preparing to switch to small, gas-driven power plants in the next 20 years.

The City of Sydney master plan, to be published today by the lord mayor, Clover Moore, will identify 15 ''low carbon zones'' based on trigeneration plants that create electricity and also generate heat and cold for airconditioning.

The switch could save up to $1.5 billion in state government spending on new infrastructure for bringing power from coal-fired plants, a report commissioned by the council said.

A ''decentralised'' power network for Sydney would be driven by gas, but the Herald understands plants would be capable of being driven by forms of biogas created from plant matter and sewage, as part of the council's ultimate goal of making the city centre carbon neutral by 2050.

With work on the new network expected to start within two years, the plan will increase demand for gas extraction, and possibly require new pipelines. ''NSW has sufficient known reserves of gas to meet anticipated needs,'' a spokesman said.

The plan will call for 360 megawatts of electricity from trigeneration by 2030, which would cut the city's greenhouse gas emissions by up to 26 per cent. ...

Most of the power plants would be just a few metres wide and power a city block or a cluster of buildings.

The council commissioned the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology, Sydney to look at the potential benefits of the trigeneration plan.

Its report found there was potential to save $200 million in extra costs to upgrade the current electricity network before 2020, rising to savings of $1 billion by 2030. In addition, the power generated in the city would offset $500 million worth of energy the state government proposed to generate at two new coal-fired power plants.