Newcastle's coal exports and the myth of 'clean coal'

By Steve Phillips

Why is Climate Camp in Newcastle?

Imagine every single source of greenhouse pollution within Australia. Every power station; every deforestation operation; every farm; every car, truck, bus, plane and train – the lot of it. Over half a billion tonnes of equivalent carbon dioxide every year. Now double it. And add a bit more still. That's what happens to our climate footprint if you count our coal exports.

Australia exports more coal than any other country in the world, from a handful of ports in Queensland and two in NSW, including Newcastle – the biggest coal port in the world. The coal port at Newcastle is Australia's single biggest contribution to climate change.

Coal exports are not only our biggest contribution to greenhouse pollution, but our fastest growing. Expansion projects underway in Newcastle would lift coal export capacity from 102 million tonnes per annum to 211 million tonnes. When burned in overseas power stations, this much coal would produce over half a billion tonnes of greenhouse pollution, every year, indefinitely – nearly as much greenhouse pollution as currently generated in the whole of Australia.

It's the same story in Queensland. Bipartisan commitment to “tackling climate change” is one thing, but record high coal prices are another matter entirely. Right now in Australia, the coal industry is going gangbusters, with the full rhetorical and financial support of both State and Federal Governments – who appear incapable of saying 'no' to the smooth lobbying machine of the 'Greenhouse Mafia'.

Even if the world were not in the midst of a climate crisis, this unmitigated export coal boom would be a huge mistake. To double coal exports, you need to double coal mining. You need to double the destruction of fragile and rare bushland ecosystems razed to make way for open-cut moonscapes. You need to double the water pollution. You need to double the dust and noise pollution responsible for the epidemic of respiratory illnesses experienced by the people of Muswellbrook and other mining towns in the Hunter.

In fact, there are around 30 coal mining proposals in various stages of proposal and development in NSW designed to feed the massive expansion of Newcastle coal exports. A lot of the proposals are in the Gunnedah Basin – the region north-west of the Hunter Valley that the coal industry openly refers to as “the new frontier”. The Gunnedah region is currently one of the most fertile agricultural regions in Australia – a breadbasket of the nation. But if the coal industry gets its way (and it's used to getting its way) then Gunnedah will be afflicted with the same open-cut cancer that we see on the other side of the Great Dividing Range in the Hunter Valley – where a third of the valley floor is occupied by open cut coal mines.

But of course, we are in the midst of a climate crisis, and that makes the Australian coal bonanza a crime not just against the species, ecosystems, and people of this land, but a threat to the very future of life on earth as we know it. If the world is going to avoid catastrophic runaway climate change, we have to learn to leave the carbon in the ground.

The climate debate in Australia is yet to make that next transition into acknowledging that burning fossil fuels is the cause of the problem, and therefore we need to stop doing it. The Camp for Climate Action is attempt to capture the attention of the nation and highlight that simple fact.


But what about “clean coal”?
You may have noticed a splash in the news earlier this year on the Otway Basin carbon sequestration project in Victoria– hailed as “the world's largest research and geosequestration demonstration project” by the people who are running it (a collection of government, business, and universities called the CRC for Greenhouse Gas Technologies).

For all we know, that's true. It probably is the largest project of its type in the world. But that's just the problem – it's tiny. In fact, the Otway project is a perfect example of how dubious and immature the very concept of Carbon Capture and Storage (or “clean coal”) really is. The Otway Project will bury less than 0.5% of the greenhouse pollution that one power plant produces in one year. And it will do it as a one-off over eighteen months.

Coal companies and governments are spending a lot of rhetoric, and nearly as much money (much of it owned by the public), promoting the concept of “clean coal.” The idea is that the world can go on burning coal, and the greenhouse pollution can be captured and buried, rather than released into the atmosphere. The problem is not just that it probably won't work (burying 100,000 tonnes of pollution is one thing, but burying billions and billions of tonnes every year, indefinitely?), but that even if it does, it will be way too late.

Even the gung-ho supporters of clean coal don't claim that relying on it will result in a reduction of greenhouse emissions by 2050. They just say that greenhouse emissions will not rise as much as they would have otherwise.

That's just not good enough. Greenhouse pollution needs to start falling in the next few years, and must be approaching zero within a few short decades if we're going to avoid runaway climate change.

Meanwhile, every tonne of coal that is currently exported from Newcastle harbour is converted to carbon dioxide and dumped into the atmosphere. If coal exports from Newcastle are doubled as planned, every tonne of coal that leaves Newcastle will still be converted to carbon dioxide and dumped into the atmosphere.