Govt report on warming a failure, scientist says

Canberra Times
Wednesday 15/8/2007 Page: 7

The Federal Government should boost investment in renewable energy and ban building new coalfired power stations in Australia if it intends to take climate change seriously, a leading energy scientist has said. Dr Mark Diesendorf, director of the University of New South Wales's sustainability centre, described a new report by the House of Representatives science and innovation committee on carbon capture and storage technologies as "a failure of nerve" in tackling Australia's contribution to global warming.

The committee "clearly lacked the courage to make the obvious recommendation" from the majority of evidence presented to them, he said. "There is a huge gap in this report - a missing recommendation. There should be no more coal-fired power stations built in Australia - that's the logical recommendation they should have made." Research showed Australia could cut CO2, emissions from stationary sources, such as coal-fired power stations, by 50 per cent by using existing renewable energy technologies with small improvements".

The parliamentary report, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, says carbon capture and storage has the potential to reduce the negative impact of man-made greenhouse gas emissions and recommends building large-scale demonstration projects to test technologies. It said most of the technology was already known and available, but there was a lack of experience in developing them to the commercial scale required. It recommended Australia build a pilot plant to demonstrate all aspects of the process from coal conversion, carbon capture, treatment, transport and burial underground.

Dr Diesendorf said a large-scale carbon-capture demonstration plant would cost billions compared to the comparatively small investments needed to roll out renewable energies. "Such a large-scale plant is the province of super-powers. It is a delusion of grandeur and a waste of money. We have renewable technologies like wind, solar and hot rocks geothermal that are proven and available now." Boosting government investment in renewable energy would also create thousands of new jobs in regional towns across Australia.

The chairman of the House of Representatives science and innovation committee, Liberal backbencher Petro Georgiou, said a carbon-constrained world would have a huge impact on Australia's ability to benefit from coal exports and relatively cheap electricity. "As the production of energy from coal creates significant greenhouse gas emissions, it is important that Australia pursues CCS [carbon capture and storage technology] as a means of reducing carbon dioxide emissions and ensuring Australia's prosperity in the future."

The committee's report has been attacked by four Coalition politicians, all members of the science committee, who issued a dissenting statement claiming it contained misleading information about the causes of climate change. The four MPs - Dennis Jensen, Jackie Kelly, Danna Vale and David Tollner - embarrassed Prince Minister John Howard by declaring they were climate-change sceptics. They claimed man-made climate change was a myth because "global warming [was] observed on other planets" such as Pluto, Neptune and Jupiter. Mr Howard has distanced himself, telling Parliament he did not agree with the group's statements.