Clean coal not backed by funding
By Paddy Manning | smh.com.au | 12 November
The coal industry's main vehicle to fund development of "clean coal" technologies spent just $35.2 million on three projects last financial year, less than 0.1 per cent of the year's black coal export revenue of $52 billion.
Total spending since the so-called "Coal21" fund was announced in 2006 and established the following year is just $36.4 million – a fraction of the $1 billion financial commitment to clean coal technologies over 10 years touted by the Australian Coal Association.
Coal21 gets a levy of 20c a tonne on black coal produced in Australia by subscribers to the fund, drawn from the association's members.
In 2007-08 and 2008-09, the fund received $58.9 million and $68.1 million respectively, according to accounts filed yesterday by ACA Low Emissions Technologies.
Black coal exports earned about $76 billion in the same two-year period, according to ACA figures.
This year the Federal Government announced it would spend $2.8 billion to develop carbon capture and storage, including $2.4 billion to part-fund "flagship" projects.
According to last year's accounts, the Coal21 fund has spent $28 million on the Callide Oxyfuel project and $6.1 million on the ZeroGen project, both in Queensland.
Callide Oxyfuel, a refit of the 30-megawatt Callide coal-fired power station, now under way, received $50 million in federal funding from the Low Emissions Technology Development Fund.
Coal21 will provide another $38.6 million, most of it over the next five years, to provide about a third of the funding needed for the $200 million project.
The ACA's director of technology, Burt Beasley, said the funding would provide carbon capture technology at the power station but the carbon dioxide storage component of the project was still being evaluated.
Coal21 has a larger commitment, of up to $300 million, to the Queensland Government-backed ZeroGen project, which is an applicant for carbon-capture funding, but only $6.1 million has been spent so far, on feasibility studies.
Coal21 also spent $950,000 on the Otway Stage 1 project in Victoria. It has an in-principle commitment with the Delta Post Combustion capture project in NSW.
Mr Beasley said the industry would spend $1 billion on clean coal technologies by 2016.
"As always in the early years , these are fairly sizeable projects, the spend rate is not as high as it would be in the middle years of the project.
It's inevitable that the spending rate will increase over time."
First published by Smh.com.au on November 12 2009
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