`Coal key to green vision'

Bendigo Advertiser
Saturday 5/4/2008 Page: 12

Victorian Government will boost funding to sustainable energy projects and sign a memorandum of understanding with the US-based Clinton Climate Initiative, Premier John Brumby announced yesterday. Speaking at a climate change summit in Melbourne, Mr Brumby proposed a $72 million fund to breathe new life into large scale renewable energy projects across the state, such as solar energy, wave power, geothermal and biomass conversion.

The money will form the next stage of the Energy Technology Innovation Strategy grants. The Clinton Climate Initiative was run by former US president Bill Clinton's William J. Clinton Foundation, Mr Brumby said. Victoria will use the foundation's purchasing consortium to deliver items such as hybrid buses, use new financing models to accelerate the transition to low energy street lighting and procure alternative waste treatment technologies.

Victoria is heavily reliant on brown coal but Mr Brumby denied the state was addicted to it. "Our challenge now is to make it a fuel of the future. Some people say you can never do that with coal, I don't believe that," he said. Mr Brumby said turning coal into gas and synthetic diesel, while capturing the carbon underground in natural gas wells, would provide a carbon-neutral solution.

"That's the technological challenge," he said, adding some money may be available for this through the Clinton Climate Initiative. In his keynote address, the federal government's climate change adviser Professor Ross Garnaut said commercial success of Carbon Capture and Storage would be the key to a future for the coal sector.

"The very low cost of mining Victorian coal will give Victoria advantages, if we can get commercial Carbon Capture and Storage working well," he said. Mr Brumby also promised Parliament House would spend an extra $90,000 a year to pay for green power to supply the building. Victoria has set a target to reduce greenhouse emissions by 60 per cent by 2050, based on 2000 levels. The government will work towards a green paper on climate change, to be completed in six months.