CCS vs HZR

Maybe we can convince Angus to give us $4billion dollars

Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor announced in 2020 that CCS was one of the five key techonologies the government would support in its efforts to reduce emissions.

“Since 1999, Australian governments have committed at least $4 billion of public money to CCS research and development, despite the fact the technology is orders of magnitude more expensive than zero-carbon renewable projects, and has never been commercially viable,” said acting Greens leader Nick McKim. “Of that $4 billion, only $60m has ever made it to a commercial-scale project. And that project [Gorgon] has emitted over 7 million more tons of CO2 than it’s environmental approval allowed for.”

But it wasn’t just the money that was attracting criticism, nobody could seem to get the technology quite right.

In 2010, the Queensland government announced it would cease funding the so-called ZeroGen project, a CCS coal plant that was to have been completed by 2015, because it was not economically viable. By then it had already soaked up almost $200 million in state and federal government funding.

A Victorian project known as CarbonNet was abandoned after the carbon tax, which might have made it viable, was repealed.

Senator McKim has this to say: “You have to ask yourself, who in their right mind would think it’s cheaper to dig up a fossil, set it on fire, try to capture the emissions and bury it – rather than just whacking up some solar panels?”