Citizens Climate Campaign - Take Action Now - Clean Coal is a FURPHY - False belief, suspect information, tall story

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Citizens Climate Campaign	Take Action Now
"Clean Coal" is a FURPHY ^* *^ False belief, suspect information, tall story**	Walk Against Warming - Sydney, 2007

Graham Brown is a retired coal miner who worked in the industry for more than 20 years.

He is a staunch unionist but is totally opposed to the political, corporate and
official union policy on "clean coal" i.e. carbon capture and storage (CCS).

He is not funded by any organisation. His main motivation is to see his former colleagues retrained
to be able to exit the coal industry in a dignified manner as coal is phased out in Australia.

Statistics from Europe show that there are six times more jobs in the transition away from coal than there are in the coal industry.

At present, twice as many people work in McDonald's as in coal mining, according to Guy Pearse in his essay Quarry Vision. [Pearse is the author of High and Dry, who blew the whistle on the Greenhouse Mafia prior to the last federal election.]

At a climate change rally last November in Sydney, Brown denounced CCS, saying most people working at the coalface know CCS is "just not do-able. The technology is so expensive that it is not going to be economical".

The main problem is the sheer volume of CO₂ that is going to need to be captured and stored. The government hopes CCS will trap 20% of emissions from coal-fired power stations in Australia by 2020. This gas will need to be compressed 500 times for storage underground.

Transporting 20 million tonnes of highly compressed gas in either pipes, trucks or trains presents huge logistical and safety problems.

The only place where significant volumes of CO₂ can be stored is in the Cooper Basin in South Australia where Santos recently shut down a $700 million CCS project.

It would need a B-double lorry carrying 6 tonnes of CO₂ leaving NSW for the Cooper Basin every 20 seconds to store 20% of emissions from the state's power industry at present emission levels.

There is considerable risk of leakage through cracks in the ground, made worse by the naturally higher temperatures underground.

The Rudd government recently set up the National Low Emission Coal Initiative, providing $500 million over 8 years. However Brown says, "Most people know CCS is a furphy. The coal companies know it too and until late last year put little of their money into CCS. They're not wasting money on it. They're just taking what they can from the Federal Government, and saying ‘thank you very much'."

Guy Pearse says in regard to CCS, that the coal industry spends less than one thousandth of what each tonne of coal is expected to fetch on the market. This equates to 1c in every $10.

Even with the problems associated with CCS coming on line, Pearse warns that when commercial-scale power stations are finally built with CCS they're likely to cost twice as much and use a third more coal to power the process and produce electricity that is twice as expensive.

Email your local Federal member of Parliament.

Many of our elected representatives do not know the truth about the coal
industry and you will be keeping them better informed on this vital issue.

Click here to find contact details of your local federal MP - by their name or electorate.

You may also wish to email your comments to Penny Wong.
However you cannot email her, you will need to go to her website and fill out a form.

Here are some questions you may wish to ask:

Why is the government putting $500 million over 8 years into the National Low Emission Coal Initiative when carbon capture and storage (CCS) is an unproven technology? Even if it does work and become commercially available, it will be too expensive and too little to lower levels of CO₂ in time to avert dangerous climate change.

How are the huge unresolved problems of transport, safe sites and the sequestering an enormous volume of carbon dioxide to be addressed?

Why isn't clean renewable energy receiving an equivalent injection of funding when its technology is proven, clean and will become less expensive as it is commercialised?

Including comments of your own would show your personal concern about this issue, and would make it look different from the hundreds of others we hope will be sent.

Regards from the Citizens Climate Campaign Committee