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  4. 28 June 2007

Clean Coal Technology

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SpeakersKaye Dr John
BusinessAdjournment

      CLEAN COAL TECHNOLOGY
Page: 2105

      Dr JOHN KAYE [9.29 p.m.]: On Wednesday 27 June 2007 the Australian Coal Association announced a $400 million fund for clean coal research. It was also announced simultaneously in this Chamber with great pride by the Minister for Energy, Mr Ian Macdonald. What the Minister did not tell the House was that the $400 million is over a 10-year period. The Minister and the Australian Coal Association are hoping that we do not have the capacity to divide by 10, but indeed we do, and that $400 million is only $40 million per year. Given the scale of the problems confronting clean coal, that is a trivial amount, particularly in an industry with an annual turnover of more than $12 billion in New South Wales alone.
      The Minister also omitted to mention that the fund was going to be raised by a levy on coal production of a mere 20¢ per tonne. That 20¢ per tonne is less than 0.3 per cent of the average sale price of coal. In fact, coal producers will hardly notice the levy; it will be buried in the day-to-day fluctuations in price on the stock market. It cannot be termed a serious commitment to cleaning up the coal industry. On 27 June the Australian Coal Association's Mr Mark O'Neill said on ABC radio:
      This is a genuine attempt to fix the problem, it's not a public relations exercise. If it is, it's a very expensive one.
      Surely Mr O'Neill is being ironic when he says this is not a public relations exercise. Given that the sum involved is a fraction of the industry's annual profit and annual turnover, $40 million would probably be a smaller amount than the industry would normally spend on public relations. The amount of $40 million a year is not even in the same ballpark as the figure that would be required to give the concept of clean coal some chance of being successful. For an industry that produces more than $9.5 billion worth of export coal each year, $40 million is a very cheap down payment on securing the myth that coal is about to be clean. The industry is trying to buy its way out of trouble. The reality is that if clean coal as a technology is ever to be successful it has to overcome some massive challenges.

      The first of those challenges is to decide what clean coal is. Clean coal has two main meanings: first, it is simply a more efficient way of burning coal. One technology that the Minister for Energy quoted was integrated gasification combined cycle electricity generation. Even by the most optimistic estimates this will only reduce carbon dioxide output per kilowatt hour of electricity generated by about 20 per cent. Given that electricity generation is set to soar over the next 10 years, we will hardly notice that 20 per cent; it will rapidly be soaked up in the growing amount of electricity being generated. The second problem is the huge quantities of carbon dioxide produced by the electricity industry. Stationary energy in New South Wales produces about 76 million tonnes a year, and that will soon grow to more than 100 million tonnes a year. That is a huge quantity to either bury or to find another use for. It is a massive technical and economic challenge.

      The Future of Coal study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, written by people who are proponents of clean coal technology, identified that the United States coal industry produces 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, which is three times the weight of natural gas used each year in the United States. It is almost impossible to believe that any country can deal with that amount of material. There are a number of other challenges that the carbon capture and storage technology would have to overcome. The availability of storage sites in New South Wales is limited, if not non-existent.
      The costs are likely to be massive, the risks of leaks are huge and it will take at least 10 years by even the most optimistic estimate for this technology to be available. It is an unproven technology and it is a huge gamble. It is the convenient untruth. The coal industry is buying time by creating a false impression that coal can be clean in time to respond to global warming. It gives the industry time to continue to reap massive profits, profits made at the expense of our present and future and at the expense of our attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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