Energy expertise spanning groundwater, geochemistry, communities and stakeholder engagement, energy systems, policy and more was on full display at the UQ Gas & Energy Transition Research Centre's 2026 Annual Research Review.
Government, industry and research stakeholders representing over fifty different organisations had the opportunity to hear from and connect with Centre researchers at the event, which has been a staple of the Centre's calendar for more than ten years.
In addition to the event's standard research presentation and poster displays, this year's event also included three workshops designed to help the Centre formulate an energy sector research agenda for the next five years. Collectively titled the 'Pathways to 2030' workshops, they included:
- Above the surface: Fugitive methane emissions, policy & industry responses
- At the surface: Social license, coexistence & policy
- Below the surface: Production, geochemistry & water
Below is a summary of the energy sector research shared on the day.
Communities and coexistence
Communities are at the heart of Australia’s energy sector - a reality shared by companies regardless of if they focus on natural gas, renewables, infrastructure, or generation. Improving the shared understanding of how communities interact with and are affected by energy projects and policies has been a core focus for the Centre since its launch in 2013, and researchers were glad to be able to share our new findings in that space.
Centre Director Katherine Witt, who has led the Centre's community-focused research team for over ten years, shared insights from six specific projects during the event's main proceedings:
- ‘Lessons Learned – Queensland Onshore Gas Industry’, a project commissioned by Coexistence Queensland that synthesised over a decade of research and regional experience from QLD coal seam gas (CSG) development
- ‘Indicators for measuring cumulative socioeconomic impacts’, which tracked 25 years of socio-economic data across 13 towns to better understand the cumulative effects of CSG operations
- ‘Understanding public perceptions of CSG brine management’, which examined community and stakeholder views on long-term brine waste management
- ‘Pathways for Indigenous socio-economic development in the Beetaloo region’, which identified how economic opportunities from energy and agriculture can support Aboriginal communities
- ‘Future Gas Strategy- Public consultations and media analysis’ by Dr Debashish Dev, which analysed hundreds of public consultation submissions to, and media articles covering, the Future Gas Strategy
- ‘Navigating Community Consent’, also by Dr Dev, which examined company approaches to Indigenous/community consent, regulation and contexts across jurisdictions, and developed an interactive consent evaluation platform.
Attendees with an interest in communities and coexistence then had an opportunity to share their thoughts in the ‘At the surface: social licence, coexistence & policy’ workshop. As one of three thematic workshops, it invited participants to discuss emerging pressures around land use, community expectations and energy infrastructure, as well as the research, data tools and governance approaches that could support responsible development and the energy transition.
Groundwater, geochemistry and production
Groundwater, geochemistry and production are of critical importance to the gas industry, and the Centre maintains a strong core of geoscientists and engineers dedicated to helping our industry partners address challenges in the space.
The team's expertise was showcased in the event's first session with a series of research presentations. Assoc Prof Hayes was first up, sharing insights from a list of projects covering groundwater metering, well productivity, and mid- and late-life well field dynamics. Prof Christopher Leonardi followed , presenting his research into CSG geomechanics, which covers compaction, shrinkage, subsidence and more.
Dr Julie Pearce then updated attendees on her team's groundwater and geochemistry research. This work – undertaken in the field, labs and core workshops – includes projects examining sources of gas in GAB groundwater, the concentration of methane in CSG production water, and CO2-water-rock reactions connected to CO2 geological storage.
In the second session attendees had an opportunity to engage with the above topics during the ‘Below the surface: production, geochemistry & water’ workshop. Facilitated by Julie and Phil, the workshop asked attendees to help identify current gaps in subsurface knowledge and the research that could help prepare the sector for challenges on the horizon.
Energy reliability and security
‘Energy reliability’ and ‘energy security’ are becoming increasingly prominent terms in conversations on Australia’s energy transition. The Centre's growing team has developed a strong presence in the space, focusing primarily on how the energy transition will affect the role of gas in the National Electricity Market.
Attendees first heard from Dr Joe Lane in that space, who discussed forthcoming risks with planning the gas supply needed for gas-powered generation (GPG) as the electricity system becomes increasingly dominated by variable renewable energy (VRE). Joe’s presentation examined the conundrum created as GPG becomes the ‘option-of-last-resort’ for keeping the NEM resilient to VRE volatility. His research in the space finds that, perhaps counterintuitively, a decarbonised NEM would require unprecedented rates of peak-day gas supply, creating new engineering, investment and policy challenges. Joe also discussed the uncertainty over the future frequency and scale of these daily peak demands, as illustrated by his modelling of VRE capacity-factor datasets that account for long-term weather uncertainty.
Dr Afsal Najeeb, who joined the Centre late last year, followed Joe with a presentation on his work into changing price-setting dynamics in the NEM. Afsal’s research suggests that rapid battery penetration is challenging the conventional wisdom of gas as the high cost ‘price setter’. Instead, Afsal demonstrated that batteries are becoming the dominant price setter during high price instances, despite only supplying only 1% of electricity demand by volume.
The session was then concluded by Dr Hamish MacDonald, another new researcher with the Centre, who presented his analysis of Australian court decisions on fossil fuel developments in project approval legal challenges. His work examines the arguments used and how they were treated, including the market substitution argument, and shows the growing judicial acceptance for considering overseas Scope 3 emissions. The analysis, which focused on coal projects, highlights how evolving judicial approaches and climate litigation are introducing new uncertainty for project proponents and may become increasingly important to other export-oriented energy industries.
