hunt confident lv emissions will be cut

Hunt confident Latrobe Valley on track to cut power station emissions
By Rhiana Whitson

Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt says the carbon emissions produced from brown coal power stations will be halved within 10 years.

The Environment Minister says he has been meeting a number of companies that can clean up the Latrobe Valley's brown coal but he cannot provide further details.

He says he is absolutely convinced that within a decade, emissions from brown coal power stations will be at least halved.

He says technologies to achieve the target could include drying and gasification or micro-dicing.

"So instead of being a boiler type plant you become a turbine-based plant, which means that you can have not just baseload energy but also peaking capacity, whether there is the algal energy offtake, so you're not just stripping the CO2 out of the waste gas but you're also using that CO2 to create biofuels," he said.

"The emissions reductions fund will come into being after the first of July but I am absolutely convinced that within a decade, if not well before, we will have at least halved, if not done better, in terms of reducing emissions from the brown coal power stations."

The Minerals Council of Australia says there is technology already available to cut carbon emissions produced by brown coal but money needs to be spent.

The council's Megan Davison says halving brown coal emissions within a decade will depend on Government and private investment in technology.

She says the State Government is in talks with overseas interests who could bring the technology to Victoria.

"Pre-combustion technologies, separating the gas from the coal, there are post-combustion technologies where you capture the gas from post-combustion then there are a number of thermo and mechanical processes that actually enable you to reduce a significant amount of the water in the coal, therefore it burns more efficiently," she said.

She says utilising these technologies would be more likely to involve building new power stations but retrofitting is also an option.

"The companies currently generating power are heavily involved in a lot of this conversation with technology as well and have some of these technologies at pilot phase at the moment," she said.

Environment Victoria spokesman Mark Wakeham says cleaning up brown coal is a waste of time and the technology is unproven.

"Given the minister's optimism that we can cut emissions, we would like to see an increase to Australia's national emissions reduction target," he said.

"Meeting our target should be reliant upon deploying existing energy efficiency and renewable energy targets, to make sure that we hit these targets and make sure that we're not waiting for a new technology to arrive."

He says countless governments have been captivated by the allure of clean coal technologies.

"But the reality is these claims have been made for many decades now and the technologies haven't delivered," he said.

"We can't rely on as yet uncommercial technologies to achieve Australia's emissions reduction target."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-14/hunt-confident-latrobe-valley-on-track-to-cut/5020148