Friends of the Earth Brisbane
Climate Justice Collective
Member Queensland Nuclear Free Alliance (QNFA)
PO Box 5702 West End Qld 4101
Mobile: 0411 118 737


Media Release
March 13th, 2007

The Howard government yesterday announced the Victorian-based HRL Limited had won a $100 million taxpayer-funded grant for its “clean” coal technology project. And on the same day the Labor party released its discussion paper, New Directions For Australia's Coal Industry, which plans to establish a $500million fund for “clean” coal technology and set a target for clean coal-generated electricity to enter the national electricity grid by 2020.

“However, even if proven to work on a commercial scale, geosequestration would reduce Australia’s emissions by only 7% by 2020. This is because all of Australia’s current coal-fired power plants cannot be modified to capture CO2 – only new plants can do this” said Ms Brindal.

“Geosequestration is also expensive. CO2 capture and storage increases the cost of electricity generation by about 60% to 90%” she said.

“In addition, like the nuclear industry, geosequestration creates a long term hazardous waste storage problem that extends as far as 100,000 years into the future” said Ms Brindal.

“Australia needs to reduce its greenhouse emissions by 30% by 2020 if we are to avert dangerous climate change. Geosequestration will not enable us to achieve this reduction” said Ms Brindal.

“Money and research being put into this unproven technology does not address the source of carbon emissions and diverts funding from renewable technologies – technologies which already exist” said Ms Brindal.

“Supporting renewables is the only solution that will provide the groundwork for a sustainable future for both Australians and the rest of
the world” she said.

“Moving towards renewable energies should not mean a loss of jobs. In fact, renewable energy industries produce 3 to 5 more jobs per unit of energy produced. In the move to renewables, policies must enable a just transition policy for workers in the fossil fuel industries” said Ms
Brindal.

“Geosequestration further commits us to ongoing fossil fuel use, and further props up and the often unjust and environmentally irresponsible oil and coal multinationals” she said.

More information: Emma Brindal 0411 084 727