The history of carbon capture and storage as a way to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels is full of big, mind-boggling promises that have not been fulfilled.
New Nationals leader David Littleproud said this week that some viewers might have thought one of these CCS projects was ready.
Speaking to ABC Insiders host David Speers, Littleproud was trying to defend the Morrison government’s energy and climate policy, which he said was about “not just protecting gas.” [but] protecting our coal industry also with carbon capture and storage. ”
Littleproud gave an example: “You can look about 60 miles west of where I’m sitting now and carbon capture and storage is being implemented at a Millmerran coal-fired power plant,” he said.
“This is the investment we made to give certainty to the investment and make sure we had reliable energy. Complementing it with renewables and also with gas.”
There is a CCS plan that involves the Millmerran coal-fired power plant, but describing it as “being implemented” is a bit of credibility.
The plan for the power plant, operated by InterGen, consists of two parts. Neither is close to being commercially operational.
The first part is to “capture” some CO2 after the coal has burned. An information sheet on the project, known as CTSCo and led by coal miner Glencore, was released in January and said an engineering design study had been done. But this is far from “implementing” a work project.
The second part is to transport the supercooled CO2 by truck 260 km to the CTSCo farm in the Surat Basin, where Glencore says it has drilled at least two tests.
The company has not yet submitted an environmental impact assessment or obtained any environmental approval for the project, but says CO2 transported there could be stored in a geological formation 2.3 km underground.
In June last year, Littleproud announced that the Morrison government had donated $ 5 million to the CTSCo project, which Glencore first raised in 2010. In April of that year, Glencore said it had received $ 25 million more in taxpayer money for the project.
Yesterday, Glencore announced two more business partners at CTSCo, each with $ 10 million, and said after environmental assessments that it was “working to start CO2 injection in 2025.”
The other 98%
Littleproud has defended the old government’s energy policy as “sensitive” and cited projects such as Millmerran’s.
What impact could it have on power plant emissions? According to Glencore, the project has the potential to capture 110,000 tons of CO2 per year.
But according to the Clean Energy Regulator, the Millmerran coal-fired power plant released 5,257,559 tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2020-21.
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Thus, even if the Millmerran facility is built and operated (and there is somewhere to store CO2), it will only capture 2.1% of the coal plant’s annual emissions.
What about the other 5,147,559 tonnes of CO2 equivalent? Don’t look up.
Don’t talk about Paris
Federal opposition leader Peter Dutton announced his new shadow ministry this week, with pro-nuclear MP Ted O’Brien in the climate and energy strip, assisted by Senator Hollie Hughes.
This is the team Dutton has chosen to respond to an electoral defeat where voters chose candidates and parties with more ambitious climate plans.
Hughes told the ABC he was “not personally in favor” of expanding the Coalition’s 2030 emissions reduction target, which has been set in stone for the past seven years: a cut in the 28 % between 2005 and 2030. The goal of the work is 43%.
Why didn’t Hughes want to expand the coalition’s goal?
“With Australia accounting for 1.3% of global emissions, we could close it all down tomorrow and go live in the trees,” he said, apparently trying to downplay Australia’s contribution to the climate crisis (not to mention, obviously). , the country’s position as the leading exporter of coal and gas).
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“You can’t have it either way,” Hughes said. “It can’t be said that we want to increase the power supply, but we will close everything.”
As if to point out: no one says that, because it would be silly.
But here’s another thing you can’t “have both ways”: you can’t sign an international agreement with more than 190 other countries and agree to submit your annual issues to the UN every year, and then subscribe to another agreement. promising to keep improving your goals over time (all of which was done by the Morrison government), but then say that your emissions don’t matter and you won’t improve your goal.
In fact, you can. But you get an international reputation as a delayed climate action, fewer deputies and senators in parliament and the prefix “shadow” to accompany your office.
cheap nuclear?
An online headline in the Daily Telegraph this week said: “Most Australians say it’s time to go nuclear to save money, planet.”
Whoever destroyed this headline seems to know little about the cost of power generation.
According to US financial adviser Lazard, who reports on the cost of generating electricity, nuclear is, in most scenarios, one of the most expensive ways to generate electricity in the world, and two or three times as much. more expensive than solar and wind.
Dutton’s new shadow climate minister, O’Brien, and Littleproud have both been advocates of so-called “small modular reactors,” in part because they could provide cheap power.
But CSIRO’s latest draft GenCost report says “there’s no chance of deploying a plant before 2030” and by then SMR’s capital costs are expected to be around $ 7,700 per kilowatt hour. , which is more than five times the cost of large-scale solar, three times the cost of land wind and more than 10 times the cost of batteries.