kevin rudd: 100m clean coal plan

KEVIN Rudd has summoned mining and industry chief executives, environmentalists and union leaders to Canberra this morning to unveil a $100 million clean coal research institute aimed at making Australia the world hub for the climate-change-fighting technology.

The launch is the start of a major diplomatic effort to win international support and funding for the plan, aimed at realising the goal set by the G8 at its recent meeting in Hokkaido of having 20 carbon-sequestering coal-fired power plants up and running by 2020.

The Australian understands the Prime Minister will make the project the centrepiece of his efforts next week when he attends the UN General Assembly meeting in New York.

Senior executives from BHP, Rio Tinto, Santos, Shell, Xstrata, Anglocoal, ExxonMobil, Woodside and other mining companies, senior industry lobbyists, conservationists and union leaders received invitations in recent days inviting them to Parliament House this morning to hear a "major announcement" by the Prime Minister on carbon capture and storage and to take part in a roundtable meeting on the issue.

The federal government initiative would complement clean coal projects under way by the Queensland and Victorian governments.

The Queensland Government has committed $300million to research and develop clean coal technologies, while the Victorian Government has pledged more than $100million.

Mr Rudd will unveil a strategy to put Australia at the forefront of international efforts on the technology, which captures emissions from coal-fired power plants and permanently stores them deep underground.

The Australian understands that Australian missions around the world have already canvassed the clean coal idea with foreign governments, with mixed success.

Mr Rudd foreshadowed his strategy in answer to a Dorothy Dixer during parliamentary question time yesterday. "We have got this huge challenge with coal-fired power stations," he said.

"We have more than a passing interest in this - not just in terms of our domestic reliance on coal-fired electricity generation, but beyond that, in the critical role of coal exports for this country.

"We have an opportunity for Australia to be a world leader in carbon capture and storage technologies. The question is whether the Government is going to get behind industry or push industry to one side. This Government intends to get right behind industry and work with them, because we believe it is absolutely critical for CCS to work."

As the Government struggles with the design of the emissions trading scheme it intends to have operational by 2010, the critical importance of carbon capture and storage to Australia's climate change response has become increasingly evident.

Before last year's election, Labor announced a $500million national clean coal initiative, and the coal industry promised an additional $1billion, to be raised by a voluntary levy on coal producers.

Australia's CO2 co-operative research centre has a carbon capture and storage demonstration study under way in the Otway Basin in Victoria. It aims to capture and inject underground up to 100,000 tonnes of CO2 over two years. But experts say it will be at least five years and possibly 10 before the technology is commercially available.

Mr Rudd leaves for his mission to New York on Monday.