Clean coal strategy not viable for 20 years | The Australian

Clean coal strategy not viable for 20 years

Lenore Taylor, National correspondent | October 29, 2009

Article from: The Australian

CLEAN coal power stations are not viable until the carbon price reaches a minimum of $60 a tonne – a level the Australian government does not anticipate until almost 2030 – according to an audit by the Rudd government’s own global carbon capture and storage institute.

The new $100million-a-year institute found the business case for clean coal technology could only work if governments helped build the first commercial-size CCS power plants on a “field of dreams”, or “build it and they will come”, basis.

“A viable business case for commercial-scale, integrated projects has not been established at this time for coal-fired power generation and other large CO2-emitting industries,” the report states…

It says that “arguably” the ambitious goal set by the G8 last year to have 20 large-scale demonstration plants built by next year could be met.

But to meet the goal governments would need to provide direct funding, introduce a carbon price and take on the liability for the possibility that underground stores could leak, as the Australian government has done. Governments also need to help identify potential storage sites…

via Clean coal strategy not viable for 20 years | The Australian. [my emphasis]

For government to take on the liability for any leak from underground stores is practically an admission that the technology WILL NOT WORK!!!

You could easily pump tonnes and tonnes of CO2 into the ground and into geological formations that you could predict would hold some of the CO2. But with CO2 sequestration, excessive amounts of the gas could still be pumped underground, way beyond the underground storage capacity, and it would look all the same from the point of view of the company disposing of the CO2. It will eventually leak back into the atmosphere or foul the underground water stores, even if that might take some time, but the CO2 sequestration companies would still be collecting their carbon credits. They’d be packed up and gone once any leaks become apparent. It is essentially a sublimating dry ice and mirrors deception job.