The federal government will commit $100 million a year to a Global Institute, based in Australia, aimed at accelerating the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.
The federal government will commit $100 million a year to a Global Institute, based in Australia, aimed at accelerating the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.
The government says the institute will pave the way for the commercial deployment of CCS across the world by the end of the next decade.
The institute will help facilitate demonstration projects and identify and support necessary research, including regulatory settings and regulatory frameworks.
The commitment is in addition to the government's $500 million national clean coal fund, announced in February last year.
The Minerals Council of Australia welcomed the initiative, which reinforced the view that there could be no global solution to the challenge of climate change without clean coal technologies.
The council said it was encouraged by the prospect that significant revenues generated from the proposed Emissions Trading Scheme would be channelled into the institute.
"Australia is the world's largest coal exporter so it is clearly in our interest to contribute to the commercialisation of clean coal technologies, and the earliest possible adoption of that technology in the fastest growing regions of the world,'' Minerals Council of Australia Chief Executive Officer Mitchell H Hooke said in a statement.
The International Energy Agency expects global coal demand is expected to increase by 73 per cent by 2030, with China and India by that time to account for 60 per cent of total world coal demand, up from 45 per cent in 2005.
Australia already has an active research effort underway for the deployment of CCS technology, led by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies.
A number of small-scale CCS demonstration projects have commenced at Australian power stations, the largest being the CO2CRC Otway Basin project in Victoria.
That project is one of the largest and most comprehensive geological storage projects in the world, and has already successfully sequestered 10,000 tonnes of CO2 two kilometres underground.
In WA, Chevron is investigating the feasibility of incorporating carbon capture and storage at its proposed Gorgon LNG project.
Aspiring energy generator Aviva Corporation is also looking at the possibility of using CCS technology at its proposed $1 billion 400 megawatt coal fired power station near Eneabba.
Aviva has partnered with oil and gas producer ARC Energy Ltd to undertake a study on potentially burying CO2 emissions underground in depleted oil and gas reservoirs in the North Perth Basin.
