By Evolution Solar Sunshine Coast

On the weekend, the State Government, Federal Government and coal industry revealed the Callide Oxyfuel Demonstration Project. A project to produce ‘clean coal’ by trapping carbon dioxide and storing it underground.

Chris Spero, Callide’s project director believes that “it could be commercial within five years.” If they can prove the ‘capture’ part of Carbon, Capture and Storage (CCS) then the plant may be a model to retrofit coal and gas-fired plants around the world. A further $27 million was thrown at the project so that it can demonstrate its technologies for fifteen months more. The Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson, said “it will allow the project to achieve the 10.000 cumulative operating hours required as a standard to demonstrate new technologies.” According to Dr Spero, the first stage of the project involves creating smaller amounts of waste gas while the second stage is the capture of harmful emissions.

Matthew Wright, executive director of Beyond Zero Emissions, has come out against the project saying that the project is “way off reality.” “There is technology to save it, it’s fairly advanced, its efficiency is rising and its costs are coming down – it’s called renewable energy.” Among other problems, Mr Wright pointed out that it is not good enough to shove CO2 underground and hope that it stays there. We may have enough space to store it for now but when we are producing hundreds of tonnes of CO2 each year, there are any number of problems that could arise including corrosion of gas pipelines and added impurities being captured with the CO2. Mercury is also a by-product of coal-fired power which is not captured in the CCS process. Mercury pollution from coal power plants accounts for around 40% of all mercury emissions.

One cannot help but wonder why more money is being taken away from renewable energy while more and more money is invested in non-renewables such as coal. CSIRO’s David Harris said that “the attraction is that the technology is familiar and you can retrofit existing capacity.” Are we afraid to step and continue with what we know is better for us all in the long term? Does our government have a plan for the long term or is it only interested in today?

The framework for commercialising CCS will be worked out next June when the “CCS Roadmap for Australia to 2030” will be released.