Queensland premier Anna Bligh says she is determined to make carbon capture storage economically viable and has committed another $50 million of taxpayers money to finding the answer.
The Bligh government has already spent $102 million researching cleaner coal technology through the state-owned ZeroGen, a joint state-commonwealth government and industry led-research project for coal-fired power production.
The research was to be the first step in building a $4.3 billion clean coal power station - with carbon capture storage facilities - in central Queensland in 2015 which would be fired-up by 2020.
However, Ms Bligh told reporters that building the carbon capture facility by 2015, as initially proposed, was not commercially viable.
But instead of dumping the project altogether, they have changed direction and are pouring money into further research.
"This project has been the source of very valuable scientific research," Ms Bligh told reporters in Brisbane on Sunday.
"What we now know, a fully functional power station by 2015, using this technology, is technically possible but it is not economically viable.
"To make it economically viable, that means changing the focus and reviewing further storage sites for carbon.
"We have to make it a cleaner form of energy and that's why we are investing in it.
"It's not a waste of money. This is an investment in the coal industry and the people who work in it.
"What the Queensland government and the Queensland taxpayer have got in return for ZeroGen is world-leading research on the viability of carbon capture and storage technology."
Ms Bligh said that over the next three years research will be conducted on identifying storage sites for carbon.
She said Queensland possessed 300 years of coal supplies and its value would decrease without a solution to carbon capture storage.
"We are not walking away from it," Ms Bligh said.
"When you are involved in pioneering world first technology, you've got to stick with it."
The state government has come under fire for shutting down water treatment and desalination plants after spending hundreds of millions of dollars over the last few years building them.
Opposition leader John Paul Langbroek called for an independent auditor-general's inquiry.
He said the Bligh government was alerted early last year in the Weller Report, compiled by Griffith University professor Patrick Weller, that its carbon capture research was speculative.
"They were warned about this in March 2009 by the Weller report, that said that it was unviable, a speculative investment," he told AAP.
"The premier continued on regardless."
Front page
RSS Feed