The New South Wales Minerals Council launched a major
campaign yesterday in Newcastle – to “hit back” at
recent calls for the coal industry to be phased out. The campaign
places emphasis on the links between mining and its place in Australia’s
economy. Dr. Nikki Williams, chief executive to the council, explains
that the debate about coal mining and its contribution to greenhouse
emissions has been very one-sided.
The topic has become a hot debate the past few weeks in Australia,
ever since Australian of the Year, Dr. Tim Flannery, and Greens’ Senator,
Bob Brown, stepped forth to publicly criticize the coal industry
and its consequent effect on climate change.
Dr. Flannery, who agrees with the sentiments of British scientist
Dr. David King, that climate change is a bigger global threat than
terrorism, has called on the Australian government to act immediately.
Says Flannery, “I’ve said in the past that Australia
has been the worst of the worst in terms of addressing climate
change … but
I’m hopeful that we’ll see over this year some movement.”
Dr. Tim Flannery, who has been named Australian of the Year for
2007, is a well-known scientist and environmentalist, as well as
being
author of The Weather Makers, a treatise on climate change. Flannery
has been warning Australians about the risk of climate change and
informing them about sustainability for decades, yet it is only
now that public opinion is finally catching up. Often accused by
the
media of wanting to shut down the nation’s coal industry,
Flannery dismisses the claims as being untrue. It is the viability
of clean
coal technology, the industry’s answer to climate change,
that he is questioning, he asserts. “Hard steps are now required
where a decade ago we may have been able to take smaller and easier
ones,” he says. Clean Coal Technology: The Solution?
In a recent public address to the Australian Workers
Union (AWU), Dr. Flannery claimed that clean coal technology may
become redundant by cheaper and greener energy resources. The coal
industry, Flannery argues, needs to switch to low emission energy
sources as Australia does not possess the right geological conditions
to support the “clean coal process” that the coal industry
is currently pursuing.
The process, called Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), works by
injecting carbon dioxide emissions into the ground rather than
releasing them into the atmosphere.
It is the method that the Australian Government and the coal industry
are pursuing as a feasible means to “clean up” the
industry, and they have collectively pledged $1 billion to fund
CCS technology. In Queensland, three projects are already underway;
scientists busy experimenting with different options to execute
the technology.
One of these projects, CS Energy’s Oxfuel scheme, is costing
nearly $160 million to operate, and is set to be on target for
commercial use as early as 2015. As company representative, Chris
Spero, told The Courier Mail, Oxyfuel technology will “cut
up to 90% of CO2 from power stations.” It will do so by burning
coal in oxygen rather than in air, which “concentrates the
carbon dioxide gases and allows them to be captured and stored
more efficiently.”
Similar research is being done at the Pullenvale Centre for Low
Emission Technology, with researchers are trying to convert goal
to gas, pull out the CO2 and pump it underground.
Although a range of approaches for CCS have been developed, they
have yet to be made available on a large-scale commercial basis
because of the costs involved, claims the BBC. In the latest published
report on climate change by the IPCC (Inter Governmental Panel
on Climate Change), it was estimated that CCS technology will only
begin to take place in the second half of this century (CCS promoters
claim that it will be ready within 10 years). The report also estimates
that by 2020 CCS may only be capturing 9-12% of global C02 emissions,
and 21% by 2050. According to these predictions, this sounds like
too little too late.
What Australia does have, Dr. Tim Flannery asserts, is the ability
to create geothermal technology – using underground energy
to produce electricity – the cost of which would be similar
to running coal-powered stations. Another advocate, Green party
leader Bob Brown, believes that Australia’s answer to climate
change is to create new jobs in the renewable energy sector and
phase out its coal exports.
Geoff Evans, Newcastle-based director of the Mineral Policy Institute,
agrees. According to Evans, “CCS is not a realistic solution
to climate change.”
Evans writes: “The coal industry is using CCS to head off
real action on climate change. It is trying to lull the community
into a false sense of security. Instead of propping up coal we
need a really bold alternative vision, and a plan for making a
transition to a sustainable Australia beyond coal.”
Unions and the mining industry disagree. Coal is the nation's
biggest commodity export. Last year it was worth more than $23
billion - 30% of the international coal trade.
Stopping coal exports would push Australia's economy backwards,
federal Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane has stated. He asserts
that the coal industry is working hard to “clean up its act,” and
noted that Australia relies on 80% of its electricity from coal.
Michael Roche, chief executive of the Queensland Resources Council,
says such a move would take more than “$20 billion out of
the state's economy.” In
an editorial for The Courier Mail, he states that phasing out coal exports
would “drive Queensland into the dark ages while having no impact on
global greenhouse gas emissions.”
As means to protect the thousands of jobs in the industry and
Australia’s
national economy, Prime Minister John Howard has ruled out the critics’ calls
to ban coal exports. In support of this motion, the Resources Council and the
Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union (CFMEU) say Australia's coal
customers would simply buy “dirtier coal” from elsewhere, anyways. As
the debate shows, the call to put an end to the coal industry has touched
a nerve with Australians.
On one hand, certain regions are much more vulnerable to the issue; being that
they face the very real and potential consequence of employment and economic
loss. On the other hand, climate change is real and happening faster than citizens,
governments, and industries are able to cope with it.
As Dr. Flannery stated in a recent interview on ABC radio, “You
just look at public sentiment on climate change, you can see that
it is a threat
to the social license to operate for coal….I say the process is going
to become increasingly strained and difficult.”
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