Brown Coal in Latrobe Valley, Victoria
By Louise Morris
Victorian Minister for Energy and Resources Peter Batchelor has publicly
declared that the state is 'endowed with an almost unfathomable bounty of
brown coal – a subterranean mountain estimated at 33 billion tonnes that
awaits barely scratched just beneath the Latrobe Valley floor'. It seems this is driving Victoria's overwhelming reliance on brown coal (coal that has not been underground for as long and has a high moisture content).
The obvious response is that Australia is endowed with an endless bounty of
solar and wind energy potential – resources that neither pollute nor
deplete.
Unlike NSW and other states, Victoria has a wholly domestic coal industry
based on brown coal accounting for over 89% of the state's electricity
supply. Plans are afoot to expand on this dependence on coal, with HRL Ltd working to build a 400 mega watt coal-fired power station in Victoria's Latrobe
Valley. The station would emit an estimated 2.4 – 2.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually through burning 2.4 million tonnes of brown coal a year in a process known as Integrated Drying Gasification Combined Cycle (IDGCC).
IDGCC is a process in which brown coal, containing up to 70% water, emitting
an average of 1.4 tonnes of C02 per megawatt hour, is dried to the water
content of black coal with an emissions intensity of 0.8 - 1.1 tonnes
CO2MWh. This dried brown coal is then gasified and combusted to turn
electricity turbines.
Proponents of the HRL proposal claim it will be so-called 'clean coal' –
30% cleaner than a standard brown coal power plant, and about the same
emission levels as a black coal plant. However, as the Climate Institute
points out, 'there is no such thing as “clean coal” for climate change. The
description is a marketing triumph for the coal industry, like “safe
cigarettes” for the tobacco industry.'
The use of the term 'clean coal' to promote the HRL station led the
Australian Climate Justice Project and Greenpeace to lodge a complaint with
the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission last year on the grounds
that to call coal of any sort 'clean' is a breach of the Trade Practices
Act.
The HRL proposal has amassed $150 million in state and federal
government grants from schemes such as the federal government's Low
Emissions Technology Development Fund (LETDF). Taxpayers are being asked to
provide a sizable chunk of the capital for this power station, which HRL CEO
Gordon Carters estimates will cost over $800 million to build and has yet
to have a site allocated.
Ongoing reliance on coal, and perpetuation of the myth that coal can be in
any way clean, is incompatible with the sort of action we need to tackle
climate change. We need to stop building new coal-fired power plants and phase
out existing ones, with money going instead to renewable energy solutions
that ensure power supply, jobs and a future free of dangerous climate
change.
*Download a copy of 'HRL Ltd: Burning Coal at Three Minutes to Midnight', by
Corporate Watch for Friends of the Earth, at .*
