New World Energy is the dominant geothermal landholder in the Pilbara region, with seven granted Geothermal Exploration Permits  encompassing in excess of 30,000km² over the most prospective geothermal areas.

The Pilbara contains some of Australia’s largest large mining, petroleum and industrial projects, and is expanding rapidly as new resource projects are developed to meet Asia’s demand for Australia’s mineral and petroleum resources. Many of these projects are high carbon-emitters and require large amounts of base-load energy to sustain continuous and reliable production.

Horizon Power, the Western Australian Government electricity utility that oversees the region, has forecast an additional 15,000GWh demand in the region in the mid-term and has indicated to New World Energy that the delivery of electricity into the region at less than $140/MWh (excluding additional benefit from Renewable Energy Certificates) would be competitive.

With less than 1% of the energy supplied to the region currently being derived from renewable energy sources, a significant proportion of the future energy demand will need to be supplied from low-emissions technologies if Western Australia is to come close to meeting its proportion of Australia’s Renewable Energy Target.

Geothermal energy is ideally suited to underpin the delivery of renewable energy to the Pilbara as it base-load (in line with demand), is forecast to be cheap (compared to other renewable) and appears to be abundant in areas immediately adjacent to the region.

In addition to large-scale energy requirements, off-grid remote communities and towns could benefit greatly from small- to moderate-scale geothermal installations that replace diesel generators, in whole or in part. The Carnarvon Artesian Basin is an extensive aquifer system akin to the Great Artesian Basin and contains warm water that may support geothermal plants with outputs of hundreds of kilowatts, similar to that at Birdsville in southwest Queensland. New World plans to investigate and drive the development and operation of small (<1 MW) geothermal power stations to assist these communities.