In the past few months Australia has taken steps to address climate change, with the Labor federal government ratifying the Kyoto Protocol in December and setting an improved renewable energy target. However, behind these iconic and important decisions lies a business-as-usual approach.

Australia is the world's largest exporter of coal, a position it has held since 1984. In 2005-06, Australia exported 230 million tonnes of coal, while states such as Victoria rely on brown coal for up to 89% of their electricity supply.

Common sense would dictate that Victoria – the 'garden state' of the 'clever country' – would embrace alternatives such as solar energy and wind power rather than continuing to burn coal for electricity. Sadly, this is not the case. Plans are being developed to allow HRL Ltd. to build a 400 megawatt coal-fired power station in the Latrobe Valley. The station would emit an estimated 2.4–2.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually by burning 2.4 million tonnes of brown coal a year in a process known as Integrated Drying Gasification Combined Cycle (IDGCC).

The reason for increasing reliance on brown coal, according to Victorian energy and resources minister Peter Batchelor, is that Victoria is "endowed with an almost unfathomable bounty of brown coal – a subterranean mountain estimated at 33 billion tonnes awaits barely scratched just beneath the Latrobe Valley floor." The obvious response is that Australia is endowed with an endless bounty of solar and wind energy potential  – resources that neither pollute nor deplete.

IDGCC is a process in which brown coal, which is up to 70% water, emitting an average of 1.4 tonnes of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour, is dried to the water content of black coal with an emissions intensity of 0.8–1.1 tonnes. This dried brown coal is then gasified and combusted to turn electricity turbines.

Proponents of the HRL proposal claim it will be so called 'clean coal'  – 30% cleaner than a standard brown coal power plant, and about the same emission levels as a black coal plant. However, as the Climate Institute points out, "there is no such thing as 'clean coal' for climate change. The description is a marketing triumph for the coal industry, like 'safe cigarettes' for the tobacco industry" (Hamilton et al., 2007).

The use of the term 'clean coal' to promote the HRL station led the Australian Climate Justice Project and Greenpeace to lodge a complaint with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission last year on the grounds that to call coal of any sort 'clean' is a breach of the Trade Practices Act.

The HRL proposal alone has amassed $150 million dollars in state and federal government grants from schemes such as the federal government's Low Emissions Technology Development Fund. Taxpayers are being asked to provide 20% of the capital for this $750 million power station.

We need targets that keep global temperature rise well under 2°C to avoid dangerous climate change. As Spratt and Sutton (2008) note in the recently-released Climate Code Red report, "Australian emissions are five times the global average, and the world population will be half as large again by 2050, these scenarios require Australian per capita emissions be cut by around 95% by 2050".

Ongoing reliance on coal is incompatible with that requirement. We need to stop building new coal-fired power plants, to phase out existing ones, and to invest instead in the renewable energy solutions that ensure power supply, jobs, and a future free of dangerous climate change.

Download a copy of 'HRL Ltd: Burning Coal at Three Minutes to Midnight', by Corporate Watch for Friends of the Earth, at <www.melbourne.foe.org.au>.

Louise Morris is a climate change campaigner with Friends of the Earth. Last year she coordinated the Melbourne Walk Against Warming, the Victorian BigSwitch.org campaign and worked as the Environment Victoria climate change campaigner.

References:
* Hamilton, C. Saddler, H., Wilkenfied, G., 2007, Australia Institute. 'Clean Coal' and other greenhouse myths. Research Paper No 43. p.3.
* Spratt. D. and Sutton, P., 2008, Climate Code Red: A case for a sustainability emergency. p.44.