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ENVIRONMENT-AUSTRALIA: Split Over Carbon Capture Technology

Stephen de Tarczynski

MELBOURNE, May 21 2008 (IPS) - Australia’s plan to develop carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology – whereby greenhouse gas (GhG) emissions from fossil-fuel fired power stations are trapped and stored rather than released into the atmosphere – is pitting green groups against one another.

CCS “is not a technology that is actually on the table to be used within the time-frame that we have,” says Julien Vincent, a climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace Australia Pacific.

In a report released earlier this month by Greenpeace International – titled ‘False Hope’ – the environment group outlined the reasons behind its opposition to the development of CCS.

These include concerns over energy wastage, the cost involved in setting up and maintaining CCS-based power plants – as well the effect on “sustainable solutions to climate change” as investment is diverted towards CCS – and safety issues.

But underpinning Greenpeace’s wariness of CCS is the time factor. “If we had more time or we had any reason to believe that carbon capture and storage could come online sooner and make a contribution then obviously, with our goal to avoid runaway climate change, we would be considering it,” Vincent told IPS.

One major environment organisation which is not only considering CCS but supporting research into the technology is WWF Australia. A spokesman for WWF says that the technology must be developed in order to ascertain whether CCS will be a viable option for reducing carbon emissions. He argues that this needs to happen within the next five to six years.

“At the moment we don’t know whether this works. But we need to know immediately, otherwise we need to drop it and get on with what we know works,” the spokesman told IPS.

Governments have begun the process of working on the question of the viability of CCS. The federal and Victorian state governments are involved in funding Australia’s first – and purportedly the world’s largest – geosequestration (also known as CCS) demonstration plant, which was launched in early April in Victoria’s south-west.

Other CCS projects are in operation around the world, most notably in Norway, Canada, and Algeria.

The process of geosequestration involves the capture of carbon dioxide emitted from the combustion of fossil fuels. The carbon is compressed, transported and then – according to operators of the Australian project, the CO2 Cooperative Research Centre (CO2CRC) – “injected into deep geological formations where it will be trapped for thousands or even millions of years.”

Fossil fuels – such as coal, oil and natural gas – currently supply around 85 percent of the world’s energy, yet the burning of these emit large amounts of GhGs.

CO2CRC hopes that its project – which will bury some 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide – will demonstrate that the technology is safe and can “make deep cuts into Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions”.

As part of its first budget, the Rudd government announced on May 13 an AUD 500 million (481 million US dollars) fund – to be rolled out over eight years – to develop and deploy “clean-coal” technologies such as CCS.

Greenpeace has dismissed this as “wasted money.” WWF, while welcoming the government’s commitment to tackle climate change, is critical of the time-frame for the roll-out of the “clean coal” funds.

“Allocating 500 million dollars over eight years is simply paying lip service to the scale of the climate change problem. We need 500 million dollars over one year, not eight years,” says WWF Australia CEO Greg Bourne.

In a seemingly odd partnership, WWF has joined the Climate Institute in aligning itself with the Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union (CFMEU) and the powerful Australian Coal Association in calling for the creation of a taskforce to oversee a quicker implementation of CCS and for the government to make the technology a commercial reality.

But Greenpeace argues that support of CCS should not be funded by taxpayers. “The mining industry and the minerals industry are highly profitable. They should be able to fund this themselves,” says Vincent.

Bourne opines that the government needs to be involved. “We can raise something like AUD 500 million a year by putting a AUD one per tonne levy on coal exports. That would be one of the ways in which we can really accelerate the technology.”

The WWF boss told IPS that it is vital that the government acts on legislative and regulatory requirements as well as infrastructure needs.

“Companies can only do a certain amount of research before the risk becomes too high. Because if you pour a lot of money in, but the government hasn’t done any work, then you run the risk of having stranded research work,” says Bourne.

But the author of the Greenpeace report on CCS, Emily Rochon, described CCS as a “scam”. “It is the ultimate coal industry pipe-dream,” she said in a statement.

Vincent supports this view. “There’s an inevitability that we need to phase out polluting industries such as coal.” He argues that the coal industry is propagating a “false solution”.

“And you can understand why they do. Because they stand to lose out as we move away from fossil fuel generation,” he says.

Australia is a major producer and exporter of coal, the source of 85 percent of the country’s electricity. Of the coal mined in Australia, around 75 percent is exported.

Greenpeace is continuing in its actions to oppose CCS. It says that a statement backing its report was signed by more than 100 international NGOs and climate groups, including 40 from Australia. Prior to the budget, Greenpeace collected 30,000 signatures in a petition calling for the government to invest in renewable energy sources rather than fossil fuels.

While acknowledging that CCS is unlikely to have an impact on reaching 2020 emissions targets, a WWF spokesman told IPS that the technology is potentially “a major player in avoiding dangerous climate change.”

“But if it does work and is proven to work it could play a very significant role in meeting the world’s 2050 emission reduction targets,” he says.