Showing the lie of Brumby's pre-election promise that Victoria would cut its greenhouse emmissions to %20 below 2000 levels by 2020, HRL has signed a deal with a Chinese company to construct a new $750 million brown coal powered plant. The plant which still needs approval from the EPA is being sold as "clean technology" as it is "only" as polluting as black coal!!! It also puts Brumby's promise to shut a quarter of Hazelwood by 2014 in a new light too - it will just be replaced by a new brown coal plant. So we stand to compensate International Power to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars to shut a part of Hazelwood, whilst simultaneously allowing another private company to build ANOTHER brown coal plant!!!!! In an additional irony - the plant will be the first built by a Chinese company in a developed nation, so instead of Australia exporting renewable technology to help China develop cleanly we are importing coal burning technology from them. This is just another sign that our major political parties both State and Federal have no intention of altering business as usual. We need to renationalise the electricity grid to regain control over how our power is generated and massively public invest in renewables not allow the private sector to continue to profit off climate vandalism.
Read the full the article from The Age below
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/coal-station-deal-ra...
A CHINESE company has signed a contract to build a coal-fired power station in the Latrobe Valley, despite concerns about the plant's greenhouse gas emissions.
State-owned China National Electric Equipment Corporation announced it had signed an engineering, procurement and construction contract with Melbourne coal technology company HRL for the $750 million-plus plant.
The announcement, published in the China Daily and confirmed yesterday by HRL, comes as the company continues to seek environmental approval for the station, which would use new gasification technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal.
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The Age believes an HRL subsidiary, Dual Gas, has submitted a revamped application to build the Morwell plant with the state's Environment Protection Authority.
An initial application was withdrawn last month after the company was warned the proposal failed to meet emissions standards for new power plants announced in July.
Premier John Brumby set a limit of 0.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour of energy generated, effectively banning new power stations using traditional brown coal technology.
HRL had estimated its plant would have average emissions of between 0.78 and 0.89 tonnes per megawatt hour - approximately equivalent to a modern black coal power plant.
It is believed the company's new application will comply with the 0.8 tonnes limit, possibly by using less synthetic gas derived from coal and more natural gas than initially planned.
The China Daily described the 600-megawatt HRL plant as the first power station set up by a Chinese company in a developed country, and the ''largest clean energy power project by lignite [brown coal] gasification technology by far''.
But environmentalists have criticised the plant and the state government, accusing it of introducing emissions standards that fail to back up its commitment to limit pollution contributing to global warming. The average emissions intensity of power stations across wealthy nations is about half the Victorian standard - about 0.45 tonnes of gas per megawatt hour.
Originally promised to start operating in 2009, the HRL demonstration plant has been continually delayed despite $150 million backing from the federal and state governments.
HRL declined to comment on the new application. If the EPA agrees to accept it, the application will be posted online and a call issued for public submissions.
Friends of the Earth campaigns co-ordinator Cam Walker said Mr Brumby must intervene to stop the plant being built if the state was to reach its target of a 20 per cent cut in emissions by 2020.
''We know they don't know how they are going to get to 20 per cent at this point, and they are going to need every tonne [of carbon dioxide] they can find in terms of mitigation,'' he said.
Business groups have backed the development of new, lower-emissions coal plants as vital to secure the energy supply.