Clive Palmer company seeking Government assistance to develop "clean coal" plant in Queensland
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Clive Palmer's Waratah Coal company is seeking Federal Government assistance in developing a "clean coal" plant in Queensland.
Waratah Coal's manager Nui Harris told 7.30 the company lodged an expression of interest with the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) last Thursday to develop a $1.2 billion, 900 megawatt carbon capture and storage plant.
"The proposed site is north of Alpha, near Waratah's coal tenement in Queensland's Galilee Basin," he said.
Mr Harris said the expression of interest was prompted by recent statements by Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg.
"He said we should consider carbon capture and storage as part of the clean energy mix," he said.
"At the moment this technology doesn't meet the Government's clean energy guidelines, but we're hoping these guidelines will be changed in the near future."
Too early to talk about finance for CCS plant
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) involves the trapping of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and storing them in such a way as they do not affect the atmosphere.
Although technically possible, such technology has proved to be too expensive for commercial use, and has failed to reach the 50 per cent carbon dioxide emission reduction required under current clean energy guidelines.
Clean Energy Finance Corporation chief executive Oliver Yeats told a Senate estimates hearing on Monday that no CCS project was viable without extensive guarantees from the Government or an insurance company.
The Waratah Coal carbon capture and storage project was first proposed in 2009, but Mr Harris said work was suspended because the Queensland Government's timetable was too onerous.
Mr Harris said it was too early to talk about how such a CCS plant would be financed.
"We put in the expression of interest to see if we could take this forward once the guidelines had been changed," he said.
Waratah Coal is owned by Clive Palmer's private company Mineralogy.
Topics: coal, company-news, environmental-management, pollution, climate-change, alpha-4724
