`Carbon capture' may offset coal pollution - Govts must `universally deploy' storage technology

Canberra Times
Friday 11/9/2009 Page: 8

There is no such thing as clean coal, according to Britain's special climate change representative John Ashton, and it is not going away as a power source either. So to keep global temperatures from rising by more than two degrees - and thus avoid catastrophic climate change - national governments have to invest in carbon capture and storage technology. Speaking at the Australian National University yesterday, Mr Ashton's message on coal, the "elephant in the room," was blunt.

"If we want to fix the climate problem, we have to tame the elephant [and] the reality is a lot of coal will be burned before we get there. "Extracting coal is dirty and dangerous, it will never be clean.., but what we can have is carbon neutral coal through carbon capture and storage," he said. And his message on the climate change conference in Denmark, scheduled for December, was also to the point.

The meeting in Copenhagen will be the most significant conference in his 13 years as a diplomat. ''We have an agenda for Copenhagen, we are proposing Australia joins its on the platform," Mr Ashton said. "If you want to know if the agreement at Copenhagen is a credible one just ask if it opens the path to universal deployment of carbon capture and storage."

Mr Ashton, who met with Climate Change minister Penny Wong before his speech, praised the Federal Government for showing "real initiative" by setting tip the Global carbon capture and storage Institute and investing $2.4 billion in low emissions coal technologies. "Coal is an essential part of the economy for a number of developing countries, as it is for a number of OECD countries, including Australia." He said Australia and Britain were working on a six-point platform on tackling climate change.

Recognition of the imperative of taking action, a timetable for action up to 2020 and beyond and putting in place finance for carbon capture and storage were among the measures on the table. Mr Ashton said carbon capture and storage could prove to be more important in tackling climate change than an emissions trading scheme. "There is no such thing as commercially viable CCS [carbon capture and storage]; it will always be more expensive to burn coal with CCS than unabated. But at the same time, there is no reason to believe that.., cannot be afforded," he said.

Humanity faced a stark choice; inaction on carbon capture and storage could be catastrophic. "It's the cost of living with two degrees of climate change and living in a world well beyond that, perhaps four degrees or more. That inescapable reality makes action not an option, but an imperative," he said. A spokeswoman for Senator Wong said, "We share the UK Government's view that action on CCS is a crucial element of the global transition to a lower carbon economy. "We must reduce emissions from fossil fuels if we are to respond to the threat of climate change."