Clean coal plan divides green groups
Dennis Shanahan and Christian Kerr, The Australian, September 26, 2008
KEVIN Rudd has split green groups by placing new emphasis on clean coal technology to combat climate change, telling the UN its development has to be at the "forefront of the agenda" to cut global carbon pollution from power stations and not destroy the coal industry.
In a move that will avoid strife with the powerful Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, but stir growing divisions in the environmental movement, the Prime Minister has joined former US president Bill Clinton to refocus attention on how best to capture and store carbon emissions to reduce global greenhouse gases.
Mr Rudd has also moved to reassure Australian industry he wants to protect exports and development at a time of international financial crisis.
"If you look at global electricty generation into the future, it follows that after about 2050, we can still see the global economy dependent 40 per cent-plus on coal-fired electricity generation," Mr Rudd said in New York.
Mr Clinton has agreed through the William J.Clinton Foundation to collaborate to "deploy carbon capture and storage technology to large-scale projects", encourage large-scale solar power generation in Australia and improve energy efficiency in large cities.
Mr Clinton broke his hectic schedule of television and public appearances campaigning for Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama to meet Mr Rudd and sign the memorandum of understanding between Mr Clinton's foundation and Mr Rudd's Global Institute for Carbon Capture and Storage.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who met Mr Rudd overnight, is also supportive of the Australian plan.
"This collaboration will help accelerate the development of Carbon Capture and Storage technology and pave the way forits commercial deployment by the end of the next decade," Mr Rudd said.
The Prime Minister's comments sparked a fierce debate among environmental groups. Paul Toni from the WWF endorsed Mr Rudd's plans.
"Low-emission coal is absolutely critical and Australia should be pulling out every stop to get this done," he said.
The Climate Institute backed Mr Rudd's emphasis on clean coal technology, pointing to the importance of coal to baseload power generation.
"We can do it without CCS, but it's going to be more expensive relying a lot more on geothermal and solar," chief executive John Connor said.
But other environmental groups and the Greens slammed the proposals.
"We don't need to see clean coal at the forefront of climate change; we need to see renewable energy," the Australian Conservation Foundation's Owen Pascoe said.
Greenpeace spokesman Steve Campbell slammed CCS as unproven technology. "If it is to emerge at a commercial scale it could well do so far too late in the game to have any real impact.
"We need to reduce CO2 emissions now."
Mr Rudd's comments come after he launched his $100 million a year clean coal institute last Friday before the nation's top mining and conservation leaders at a private briefing in Canberra.
The institute is aimed at harnessing global efforts towards developing clean coal technology and focusing existing intitiatives by the states, including those of Queensland and Victoria.
Mr Rudd said the significant problem was "transferring CCS good intentions into CCS reality", which he hoped could be overcome through the Australian carbon capture institute.
The institute had two organising principles, he said: "One is around research and the second is around project facilitation."
"We therefore think it is time to have, if you like, something like a global one-stop shop on CCS across the field. It doesn't mean having every bright person in a white coat hanging about somewhere in Australia. It means, however, having an integrated virtual location and physical location, where necessary, of where you need to get this technology information."
Mr Rudd has declared he intends to push ahead with the 2010 deadline for an emissions trading scheme in Australia but yesterday told a UN climate change meeting the challenge of dealing with greenhouse gas emissions "is an even greater difficulty at a time when the global economy is under great global financial stress".
After highlighting the ratification of the Kyoto protocol and introducing an emissions trading scheme in the efforts to cut greenhouse gasses, Mr Rudd told the UN climate change roundtable that for Australia, as a coal exporter wanting to cut greenhouse gases in a "meaningful time frame", clean coal technology "stares you in the face".
Mr Rudd said the figures on coal use and exports for Australia meant that any credible action on greenhouse gases had to take into account the "continued pattern of electricity generation".
One key goal of the institute will be to accelerate the states' efforts - Queensland has injected $300 million and Victoria $100 million - but it is also charged with boosting global efforts to commercialise CCS technology and meet the G8's goal of 20 operating projects by 2020.
With the Government's climate change advisor Ross Garnaut recommending emissions cuts of between 5 and 10 per cent by 2020, the clean coal initiative is a recognition of both the importance of the $55 billion a year coal export industry and the reality that coal-fired power will remain the dominant source of baseload electricity.
The object of carbon capture and storage technology is to strip out the carbon emissions in coal-fired electricity generation and keep them out of the atmosphere by storing them underground.
The Coalition government had resisted ratifying the Kyoto agreement on the grounds that it could damage the coal industry and spent more than $600 million on clean coal technology.
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