Stan Beer
Wednesday, 16 April 2008 16:57
Science -
Energy
Page 1 of 2
Unity among various factions of the green movement in Australia appears to be disintegrating as a result of disagreement over the purported greening of coal power.
In one corner are hardliners Greenpeace and the Australian Greens political party, who believe coal is flat out evil, facing off against the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Climate Institute, who have teamed up with the coal industry to push investigations of whether coal power carbon emissions can be cleaned up by carbon capture and sequestration technologies.
Carbon capture and storage technologies seek to
trap and divert the carbon dioxide emissions of coal fired power plants
into natural storage facilities in the earth such as old disused
natural gas mines instead of allowing the greenhouse gas to escape into
the atmosphere. The technology was strongly supported by the previous
Howard Government which was mindful that Australia's energy and
economic future is still strongly tied to its abundant coal reserves
Opponents of carbon capture claim the technology is impractical,
expensive and may even be dangerous if the stored carbon dioxide finds
its way back into the atmosphere through the water table. An incident that occurred in 1986 at Lake Nyos in
Cameroon, when a large carbon dioxide cloud was suddenly emitted from
the volcanic lake fatally suffocating 1700 people who lived in the valley below, is sometimes used by opponents to illustrate the potential danger of carbon dioxide sequestration.
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