Yesterday the Federal Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson, announced withdrawal of $100 million funding for the HRL proposed coal gasification 600MW power station in the La Trobe Valley.
June 28, 2012: Up to 300 People gathered on the steps of the Victorian Parliament house to show opposition to new coal projects which would destroy prime farmland and triple Victoria's contribution to greenhouse pollution.
Residents from Bacchus Marsh and south Gippsland attended to show their opposition to new coal mining projects and plans to use an experimental drying technology by Exergen to open up further mining and the export of brown coal.
Related: Latrobe Valley Coal Power and Climate Change | Carbon capture and storage and the Melbourne earthquake | No coal mine in Bacchus Marsh - locals and activists halt exploratory drilling | Photoset on Flickr
Victorian residents are fighting to stop the construction of a new 600MW coal fired power station at Morwell in the La Trobe valley. The HRL coal gasification plant proposes to turn brown coal into a synthetic gas which is mixed with natural gas to fire steam turbines to generate electricity. The pollution generated will be the equivalent of a black coal fired powered station, around 4 million tonnes of CO2 pollution each and every year.
John Howard awarded HRL $100 million, a low emissions technology 'clean coal' grant contingent on it meeting certain project deliverables including raising commercial finance by 31st December 2011. These conditions have not been met. Victorians will rally on Wednesday 1st February 2012 at Parliament House in Spring Street at 12.30pm for the Federal Government to withdraw this grant money and redirect it to renewable energy projects. And to ensure that Julia Gillard keeps her 2010 promise "that there will be no more dirty coal powered stations built in this country".
Related: July 2011 - Victorian Government needs to come clean on plan to achieve 20 percent emissions cut by 2020 | June 2011 - Ferguson and Gillard feeding HRL's coal gasification technology in Melbourne | April 2011 - Government foyer occupied to stop new Victorian coal power station | Campaign sites: Stop HRL, Quit Coal
Onlookers were shocked in Melbourne on 20th June by the sight of Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Energy and Resources Minister Martin Ferguson literally sending money up in smoke! The pair were in Melbourne to demonstrate the effectiveness of HRL's coal gasification technology on a small scale, but found that just like on the large scale, the demonstration plant could only be kept chugging along by being fed a generous helping of tax-payer dollars!
Below is a description of the rally from Melbourne Protest weblog. A huge banner dropped from the roof of the Hotel Windsor could be seen yesterday from Parliament House over the heads of several hundred protesters angry at the recent EPA approval granted to energy company HRL for a brown-coal power station in the Latrobe Valley – if anyone in there was watching…
A group of five climate protesters walked into the foyer of the Victorian State Government ministerial offices at 1 Treasury place and locked on to a ladder. Outside the building another 100 protesters gathered. The protest called for the withdrawal of funding for HRL's proposed new coal fired power station in the Latrobe Valley.
The stretch of High Street outside the office of ALP State MP for Northcote Fiona Richardson was more than usually noisy this morning as peak-hour motorists – and several cyclists - responded to the call from members of Darebin Climate Action Now who were picketing the office with placards opposing the projected HRL coal-fired power station in the Latrobe valley and calling for real action on climate change.
Melbourne's Cross Campus Environment Network (CCEN) organised a rally on Monday outside the office of Premier John Brumby in opposition to energy
company HRL's plans to build a new coal-fired power station in the Latrobe Valley. Apart from a range of speakers condemning the plan, in the interests of
fair play they also invited a representative of the company to answer objections...
Today members of the Cross Campus Environment Network (CCEN) held a demonstration at the Melbourne office of HRL with the mock launch of a new 'clean coal' technology. The building went into lock-down when the protesters arrived at the steps of the office with a ramshackle 'state-of-the-art' coal cleaning machine.
