Thw Age has reported that the Victorian Government is considering closing two of the Hazelwood power station’s eight power units. The La Trobe Valley power plant produces almost a quarter of Victoria’s electricity from brown coal and is regarded as Australia’s dirtiest power plant – some environmental groups claim that it is the dirtiest power plant in the developed world.

Closing a quarter of the plant would cut of 4 million tonnes of carbon emissions a year – just over 3% of Victoria’s annual emissions and 0.7% of annual national emissions.

A complete closure of Hazelwood would only go ahead once an emissions trading scheme – or an alternative federal opposition climate plan – is in place.

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A report by the US National Academy of Sciences shows that US coal-fired power plants do over $US62 billion ($au67 billion) in "hidden costs" through environmental damage every year.

These include damage done to crop and timber yields, to buildings and materials, to human health and damage done to recreational activities and through reduced outdoor visibility. They do not include any costs from climate change as a result of burning coal.

The study concluded that the aggregate damages associated with sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter emitted by American coal-fired power plants amounts to $US156 million ($au164 million) per annum on average per plant.

If the same results apply in Australia, the total "hidden cost" of Australia’s coal-fired power plants would be around $5 billion per annum – excluding any damage through global warming and ignoring the much larger effects of burning Australia’s exported coal.

The Queensland Government has approved the construction of a 900 megawatt "clean" coal-fired powerstation in the Galilee Basin.

The power station is to be built by Galilee Power which is owned by Waratah Coal Pty Limited. Waratah Coal announced Australia’s largest thermal coal mine and infrastructure project, worth $7.5 billion, earlier this year.

Waratah Coal said that the $1.25 billion power station, which will incorporate carbon capture and storage technologies, will employ 60 people when operating and about 1,000 during the construction phase. Construction is expected to start in about three years.

Queensland;s Premier Anna Bligh has released the government’s new climate change strategy, "ClimateQ: Towards a Greener Queensland".

The major initiative is that no new coal-fired power stations will be built in Queensland unless they use world’s best emissions technology and are able to capture and store carbon and must do so within five years of the technology becoming available. One new coal-fired power station is currently proposed for the state, to be built at Wandoan, near Miles. It is already part of a flagship carbon capture and storage scheme.

The climate change strategy also includes an anti-congestion plan, using a high-tech traffic management system, and programs to change travel habits and offset vehicle emissions. The carbon offset scheme will allow the public to purchase offsets for vehicle emissions with the funds being used to purchase biodiversity corridors across the state.

A CSIRO report on Queensland’s potential to mitigate greenhouse gas through biosequestration was also released.

The report found the Queensland government, as the third largest landholder in the world, has significant potential to create carbon "sinks", storing large amounts of carbon in forests and the soil.

Professor Tim Flannery, who is on the government’s climate change council, said it was timely, as US legislation had just created a $20 billion a year carbon sequestration industry there.

Origin Energy has contracted Carbon Consious Ltd to plant more than six million trees over the coming three years in what the companies believe is the largest carbon pollution reduction bio-sequestration project in Australia to date.

Carbon Conscious will plant native mallee eucalypt trees in wheat-belt regions for the purpose of generating carbon permits tradeable under the federal government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction scheme. In return, Origin will pay Carbon Conscious a total of $26 million, by way of planting fees and licence and management fees for a period of 15 years

If Origin exercises further options under the contract, the full project would potentially provide for the planting of more than 30 million mallee eucalypts and sequester about six million tonnes of carbon.

Mallee eucalypt

Origin Energy Ltd has unveiled plans to capture some of the carbon dioxide output from the Lang Lang BassGas plant in Victoria for commercial use in wine and soft drink carbonation.

The company plans to supply about 25 per cent of the carbon dioxide from the Lang Lang project to a $20 million plant built by Air Liquide which will purify and liquefy the gas.

Meanwhile, scientists have identified ten sites in five areas off the coast of the Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia which they say are stable enough to be used for carbon storage. Licences for the commercial development of these sites will be available later this year.

Federal Resources Minister, Martin Ferguson, said that "This is about Australian industry. Capturing our own CO2 emissions and potentially storing them, having a domestic impact to assist our industry in remaining competitive internationally. It is not about Australia becoming a carbon sink for other companies or countries’ activities, it is un-economic to even think about that."

Australia will set up a A$100 million a year carbon capture research institute aimed at fighting climate change and becoming the world hub for the technology

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said that he would seek international backing for the institute at an address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York next week.  "We, the government, want this global carbon and storage institute in Australia to be the global go-to place across the board for clean coal technologies and their application. That is the ambition. … So we will be providing up to $100 million a year to fund this global carbon capture and storage institute." he said.

The new institute would start out in Australia with the objective of helping meet the G8 commitment to have at least 20 industrial scale carbon capture and storage projects in operation by 2020. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown had already offered support, Mr Rudd said.

Currently, there are five pilot carbon capture and storage projects worldwide, including one at Otway in Victoria. "A lot of good work is going on out there, but it’s not very coordinated," Mr Rudd said.

Carbon dioxide has been captured from power station flue gases in a post-combustion-capture (PCC) pilot plant at Loy Yang Power Station in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley. This is the first time CO2 has been caputured using the PPC process at a power plant in the Southern Hemisphere.

According to CSIRO Energy Technology Chief, Dr David Brockway, “PCC uses a liquid to capture CO₂ from power station flue gases and can potentially reduce CO₂ emissions from existing and future coal-fired power stations by more than 85 per cent.” Future trials will test a range of different CO₂-capture liquids.

The project is part of the Latrobe Valley Post Combustion Capture Project – a joint collaboration between Loy Yang Power, International Power Hazelwood, government and researchers from the CSIRO. The CSIRO is undertaking similar research at Munmorah in NSW and near Beijing in China and is negotiating the installation of another pilot plant at a Queensland site.

The Federal Government has quietly launched its draft bill  to regulate the burial of carbon dioxide off Australia coast just days after BP and Rio Tinto have confirmed that  they have abandoned a $2 billion project to trial the burial of carbon dioxide off Western Australia.

The joint project was to involve the construction of a coal-based "hydrogen energy" power plant at Kwinana, south of Perth, to produce 500MW of electricity – enough for 500,000 homes. The resultant carbon dioxide was to have been buried in geological strata between Fremantle and Rottnest Island. After two years of investigation, BP has discovered that this geological formation contains "chimneys" which means that it would be impossible to prevent the gas from escaping.

The $2 billion project would have been the biggest of its kind in the world.

Dr Peter Cook, the Chief Executive Officer of the Co-operative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas said “While it would have been nice to see the Kwinana project get off the ground, we do not see geosequestration in the Perth Basin as a write off because of this one setback and I don’t think the companies involved are walking away from the technology either, they’re certainly still involved with the CO2CRC in other areas. It has to be put in a global context and there are quite a few other projects that are moving ahead, including the Otway Basin project in Victoria. As well as the Perth Basin, in WA we’re also looking at a number of onshore areas, including an area known as the Harvey Ridge in the South West.”

At the Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra yesterday, the Population, Sustainability and Climate Stream proposed that, by 2020, Australia should "be making a major contribution to a comprehensive global response to climate change, including working with our partners on clean energy".

The Stream agreed that there should be a national sustainable cities program supported by taxes and other policies which encourage the use of public transport. By 2020, carbon neutrality should be required for all new buildings and all Australians should have access to smart meters measuring their energy and water consumption.

A proposal that no new coal-fired stations be built unless they have commercially proven carbon capture and sequestration received wide support and applause. However, the idea was opposed by a a group described by climate scientist David Karoly as industry figures within the stream and some others with concerns about the effects on coal mining communities. "There is and was within the group very strong support and a small minority of opposition that in the end prevented that because the minister and co-chairs wanted consensus," Professor Karoly said.

As a result of the minority opposition to the idea and despite calls for a vote, Stream Co-Chair, Senator Penny Wong, refused to take the proposal forward. "We’ve not voted on anything else, we’ve tried to come to agreement, a consensus agreement," she said.

Anna Rose, co-director of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition commented "I found myself in the climate stream with representatives of … Xstrata and Shell, yet not a single person from an environment non-government organisation. No one from Friends of the Earth, the Australian Conservation Foundation, Greenpeace, Climate Action Network Australia or any of the state conservation councils."