Critical Times

Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, let the coal cat out of the bag on ABC Radio National this morning, when he admitted that the proposed ‘clean coal’ is “expensive”, not the cheap solution that would allow us to continue to use cheap coal.

Australian Greens climate change spokesperson, Senator Christine Milne, said “There can be no excuse for the Government making the already uneven playing field even more biased in favour of fossil fuels, as a coalition of lobby groups is calling for in Canberra today.

“It makes no sense for the Government to throw taxpayers’ dollars at an expensive and unproven technology when the renewable energy and energy efficiency alternatives are affordable and ready to be rolled out immediately.

“Imagining a decarbonised economy means cleaning the coal dust out of their eyes.

“Before considering for one second lifting fossil fuel subsidies further, Minister Garrett must explain how the Government can justify continuing to give one of Australia’s most profitable, but most polluting, sectors ten times the funding of the clean, sunrise renewable energy industry.

“So-called ‘clean coal’ has always been justified by governments and the coal sector based on the claim that renewables are not a cost-effective alternative. With this admission from the Minister, agreeing with similar admissions from energy experts around the world, such claims for ‘clean coal’ are junk economics.

“The dream of cleaning up coal has been slipping away in recent months, with the collapse of the FutureGen project in the USA being the latest example of blown-out budgets and timelines. Industry spokespeople in Australia and around the world are now admitting that their expectations of commercially-viable ‘clean coal’ by 2020 are looking increasingly unlikely.

“Under what perverse logic does the failure of an industry to perform require that it is given extra support? Many gigawatts of baseload-capable renewable energy are being installed around the world today, while the best estimates of the coal sector, that they could have a handful of commercial plants online by 2020, are being revealed as an exercise in wishful thinking. The urgency of dealing with climate change is such that we must put every bit of support we can into the technologies that can reduce emissions now, not pin our hopes on an unproven dream because it could save one industry.

“Minister Garrett must also back up his claim this morning that international visitors are telling him that the Rudd Government has the best climate policies in the world. This claim is so patently ludicrous, it is time to name names, Mr Garrett.

“Australia’s emissions from energy, transport and logging are still skyrocketing unchecked. The Rudd Government’s policies, far less comprehensive than those in Europe, California and New Zealand, are tinkering around the edges unless and until emissions start to fall.”
For More Information:

Tim Hollo
Email: tim.hollo@aph.gov.au
Phone: 0437 587 562