The government is going to prop up the coal industry even further. It was bad enough when Howard pledged $400 million to them a year or so ago - now Rudd's throwing another $100 million at this lucrative industry. Climate change critics should be pleased that our PM is putting big business before decent investment in clean alternative energy.
According to critics there is no such thing as clean coal - all they can do is convert it to gas and store it - who knows where.
Quote:KEVIN Rudd has split green groups by placing new emphasis on clean coal technology to combat climate change, telling the UN its development has to be at the "forefront of the agenda" to cut global carbon pollution from power stations and not destroy the coal industry.
In a move that will avoid strife with the powerful Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, but stir growing divisions in the environmental movement, the Prime Minister has joined former US president Bill Clinton to refocus attention on how best to capture and store carbon emissions to reduce global greenhouse gases.
Mr Rudd has also moved to reassure Australian industry he wants to protect exports and development at a time of international financial crisis.
"If you look at global electricty generation into the future, it follows that after about 2050, we can still see the global economy dependent 40 per cent-plus on coal-fired electricity generation," Mr Rudd said in New York.
Mr Clinton has agreed through the William J.Clinton Foundation to collaborate to "deploy carbon capture and storage technology to large-scale projects", encourage large-scale solar power generation in Australia and improve energy efficiency in large cities.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24404241-601,00.html
Governments know that coal will never be clean but are beholden to big business at any cost.
Quote:There is no such thing as clean coal," says James Hansen, NASA's expert on global warming, who says all coal plants, even TECO's, still emit millions of tons of carbon dioxide - the most threatening greenhouse gas.
"There is no coal plant that captures the carbon dioxide and that's the major long-term pollutant," says Hansen.
But if carbon dioxide pollution is the problem with clean coal, many scientists believe there is a solution. They believe it's possible to recover most of the carbon dioxide and store it underground.
The idea is called "capture and sequester," and a global race is on to learn how it should be done. One Norwegian firm is storing tons of carbon dioxide in rock caves beneath the North Sea. America's efforts to sequester carbon have stalled. The Department of Energy planned to fund a plant, but pulled all funding when the price grew too high.
"They took seven years just to decide where they were going to make a pilot plant - and then they decided to cancel it," says Hansen.
And now, the failure to solve the carbon dioxide problem is a threat to coal itself. In the last five years, at least 63 coal-fired power plants have been scrapped or defeated by public opposition.
Florida Governor Charlie Crist helped pull the plug on the two clean coal plants because he says without a carbon solution, clean coal is not an option.
"Until that time comes, we want to develop more solar, more nuclear, more wind," says Crist.
Which is why the industry needs an ad campaign. Until the federal government funds the research on carbon dioxide, America's reliance on coal is in long-term trouble.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/20/eveningnews/main4199506.shtml
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