Cleaning up Carbon

For the second time in its history, Perth is aware that it is sitting on a goldmine. Demand for commodities has meant that Western Australia, with its abundant reserves of coal, gas, and mineral resources, is booming. But traditional reliance on cheap coal and energy intensive industries has meant that the Australian economy is one of the most carbon intensive in the developed world.

New Prime Minister Kevin Rudd fought his election campaign on the recognition that Australia had a global responsibility to reduce its emissions, and Questions for the Future travelled to Perth in April 2008 to ask how Australia can clean up carbon.

Chai Mcconnell of the Zerogen project in Queensland, plans to capture and sequester the carbon emissions from coal-fired generation:

“Let’s be clear: climate change is a clear and present danger to the world economy. We have to throw everything, including the kitchen sink, at this problem. But clean coal technology represents one of the fundamental tools to address climate change.”

Stuart Hohnen, Executive Chairman of the Dampier Bunbury Pipeline, argued that lower emitting gas-fired generation could deliver more immediate benefits: “To meet the greenhouse challenge we must have competitive gas, but we are currently facing a situation where consumers can’t actually get gas”.

Hohnen believes that Australia has failed to balance its ambition to be a gas exporter with the need to save domestic gas reserves for its energy intensive industry. Former WA energy minister Colin Barnett agreed that gas fired generation won the emissions argument hands down: “if we were to make our energy with natural gas, carbon emissions would halve”.

Renewable energy sources still account for less than 2% of the energy mix due to Australia’s traditional reliance on cheap fossil fuels. Dr. Ray Wills, CEO of the Western Australia Sustainable Energy Association, said that a $15bn investment would make renewable sources commercially viable. “We won’t break the economy: these are not big numbers”. Clare Middlemas, Guild President at Murdoch University, thought that a preoccupation with resources was holding up the switch. “What I’m seeing is a debate dominated by big business – and no one can own the wind or the sun”.

John Connor, CEO of the Climate Institute in Sydney, argued that Australians would have to accept higher energy prices. “There’s a difference between paying by penalty and paying by investment”. And the penalties, he said, were immense: destruction of Australia’s other abundant natural resources, including its coastline, and exacerbating drought. Connor dismissed talk of sending industry offshore as a “20th century argument”.

But Alan Cransberg, Managing Director of Alcoa Australia, disagreed. “The last time I looked, we were already paying….. I think we already have high energy costs.

“30% of our input cost is energy, and higher prices which pushed industry away from Australia would have an adverse environmental outcome.” Making a tonne of aluminium in Australia, he said, had a lower environmental cost than producing it in other countries. But he recognised that “we have to preserve our energy resources for this generation and the next”.