All the links are on this one page thanks to the Cliamte spectator dated 24th May , you may have to register.
http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/pyrrhic-victory-brown-coal
Today, hundreds of Victorians will turn out at Victoria's State Parliament to protest last Friday?s decision by the EPA to approve a new brown coal power plant in the Latrobe Valley.
The EPA spent nine months looking at HRL Dual Gas's application to construct a 600 Megawatt brown coal plant using integrated drying gasification and combined cycle (IDGCC) technology. HRL has been attempting to commercialise this technology in the name of ?clean coal,? despite its carbon emissions being of a similar intensity to a standard black coal power plant.
On Friday the EPA finally delivered its decision, but with a curious twist: The project was approved, but only at half the size applied for with the EPA, allowing just one gasifier and turbine to be built at a capacity of 300MW.
This decision was as bizarre and intriguing as it was appalling. HRL?s project would ensure the mining and burning of brown coal will continue in Victoria until at least the middle of the century, all for the sake of a power plant we don?t actually need.
However, with the plant only approved at 300MW instead of the 600MW applied for, a number of questions emerge about how ? if at all ? HRL will proceed. The cut in size raises numerous technical, economic and regulatory risks.
From a technical perspective, operating HRL?s plant on only one gasifier and turbine makes the project more vulnerable to glitches, which should be expected as a matter of routine for a first-of-a-kind, commercial-scale project. Without a replica set of equipment in operation, HRL will find it harder to diagnose and treat technical issues, let alone maintain a steady power supply, all of which reflect poorly on the project?s economic credentials.
From a broader economic perspective, even greater challenges emerge. The Age revealed last weekend that HRL did not consider its project economically viable at a scale less than 400MW. HRL now faces the prospect of somehow justifying its project as worthwhile to potential investors, which the same Age story also revealed will not include any of the big four Australian banks.
HRL will also have a hard time justifying the single biggest piece of finance currently available for its project: a $100 million grant awarded by the Howard government in 2006.
The documents that show this project to be uneconomic at less than 400MW were part of an expert panel review of HRL?s application for the federal grant, revealed as part of a Greenpeace Freedom of Information request. You can see the documents here and here. The grant was ultimately awarded, despite the expert panel citing numerous economic and technical risks with the project. It?s hard to see how HRL would have won this grant if, in 2006, its project was of the size that the EPA has just approved.
Legally, HRL might also find itself in breach of carbon pollution standards. The EPA noted that HRL?s CO2 emissions would be at a rate of 0.8 tonnes per megawatt-hour. This means it only just meets the standard set by the Victorian government last year and, of the three options floated by the federal government in its Emissions Performance Standard discussion paper, HRL just scrapes through on the weakest option presented. There may also be legal implications for HRL?s Chinese electrical procurement contract, which was to supply 600MW worth of power plant equipment.
HRL?s project has floundered for more than four years now and its future doesn?t look bright. It?s time somebody stepped in to terminate this project once and for all. And with Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu seemingly hell-bent on keeping Victoria chained to a brown coal future, it may well be a federal government intervention that finally kills off HRL?s project.
After all, it is Prime Minister Gillard who said that, on her watch, no more dirty coal-fired power stations would get built in Australia. If HRL goes ahead, no matter what the scale, it would represent a fundamental failure of the Prime Minister to deliver on even the most straightforward of her climate commitments. It would also raise questions on the effectiveness of her carbon price package, if it can?t even stop new coal power plants from being built.
By implementing the strong emissions performance standard she promised when she became Prime Minister, Ms Gillard could simply make HRL?s project illegal and have done with it. Cancelling the $100 million Howard government grant ? none of which has yet been disbursed ? and the political endorsement it carries would also leave HRL to collapse back into its hollow shell and disappear off the agenda for good, allowing us to get on with the job of building a genuinely clean energy future.
Love to see some of that $150,000,000.00 come towards VCPL
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