Australian Coal Industry Voluntary Plan Will Raise $300 Million For Tech

[hatrack]

THE Australian black coal industry will commit $300 million over the next five years to advance technologies to cut greenhouse emissions. The package, expected to be announced today, will involve the electricity generation industry demonstrating the effectiveness of a range of cutting edge technologies.

The technologies include the permanent underground storage of carbon, and oxy-fuel combustion, a means of reducing the cost of capturing carbon dioxide at conventional power stations. Without the successful demonstration of these technologies, they will struggle to gain supporters and achieve commercial acceptance.

The initiative fits in with the aims of the Federal Government's energy white paper in 2004 which set up a $500 million fund to leverage more than $1 billion in private investment to develop and demonstrate low-emission technologies.

EDIT

The expected announcement comes as visiting Oxford professor and famed conservation biologist Norman Myers has told Australia he is sceptical of the coal sector's promise of cleaner technologies. Professor Myers told the National Press Club yesterday that many years now had passed since the industry promised clean-coal technologies were imminent, without anything substantial having been developed. He said he had told federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell as much during a meeting in Canberra.

EDIT/END

http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story/0,20281,18484143-5001028,00.html

That's $300 million. That's over five years, of course.

And I'm sure that by the time the Great Barrier Reef dies - five or ten years from now - they'll have their very first Clean-Coal Greenhouse Gas Reinjection Environmentally Friendly Hydrogen-Generating Pilot Program Model Demonstration Project up and running to wow all the tourists who used to come to visit the Great Barrier Reef.