[Greens-Media] Garrett lets the cat out of the bag: CCS is expensive

[Hollo, Tim (Sen C. Milne)]

Garrett lets the cat out of the bag: CCS is expensive

Canberra, Wednesday 16 April 2008  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."


Tim Hollo
Media and Communications Adviser
Senator Christine Milne
+61 (0)2 6277 3063
+61 (0) 437 587 562
www.christinemilne.org.au

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