Posts Tagged ‘carbon capture and storage’
The Council Of Australian Governments (COAG) met in Perth on the second of October. This is the premier meeting of Australian state and territory leaders with the Federal Government. Its role is to achieve policy reform on areas of national significance that require cooperative action by Australian governments. While their discussions are wide ranging, covering everything from the economy to indigenous health, of particular interest to us are the agreements relating to climate change. These discussions centred on improving energy efficiency and the new Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute.
Energy Efficiency
COAG has agreed to develop a National Strategy for Energy Efficiency to accelerate energy efficiency efforts across all governments. The strategy should also help households and businesses prepare for the introduction of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS). The strategy is expected to be ready around June 2009.
Meanwhile, COAG has agreed to develop national legislation for appliance energy performance standards and labelling. Work done here here will be fed into the energy efficiency strategy. A national framework should simplify enforcement and improve consistency across Australia.
This is a very positive step because improving energy efficiency is the most important strategy for reducing carbon emissions.
Carbon Capture and Storage
Carbon Capture and Storage has been identified by some as one of the major pathways to lower carbon emissions. In July 2008, the Group of Eight economies set the goal to commit by 2010 to at least 20 industrial scale demonstration projects to enable the broad deployment of carbon capture and storage technology by 2020.
In September the Prime Minister announced the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute. The institute’s role is to accelerate the development and deployment of carbon capture and storage technology. It will also assist supporting areas such as regulatory frameworks.
COAG agreed that the Commonwealth would work with State and Territory governments to finalise the design of the Global Carbon Capture Storage Institute. And they agreed with the principles of supporting CCS research and eventual commercial deployment.
Around 80% of Australia’s electricity production currently comes from coal, and coal exports will earn about $43 billion in 2008-09. Given our heavy reliance on coal and coal exports, it is understandable that the Australian government is keen to fast-track research into this area.
To date although small scale projects have been built, no industrial scale integrated CCS power plant has been built. However as Garnaut points out if carbon capture and storage fails Australia may still be be a country of low-cost and low-emission energy because of abundant geothermal, solar, wind, wave and biomass renewable resources and reserves of natural gas and uranium.
So while COAG’s interest in climate change is positive we should hope that we’re not putting too many eggs in too few baskets. The full COAG communique can be found here.
