“The characteristics of coal seams, which produce coal seam methane, make them most likely to allow injection and long-term geological storage of carbon dioxide,” said Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC) chief executive Dr Peter Cook.

Injecting carbon dioxide (CO2) into coalbeds could also enhance the extraction of methane gas for generating electricity, he said.

The meeting concluded that Australia appeared to be one of the most promising countries in the world for underground disposal of CO2. The researchers added that Australia also had the capacity to store huge volumes of its future greenhouse gas emissions in depleted gas fields and saline aquifers.

Currently, the most promising storage sites are in the offshore North West Shelf, Browse and Timor Sea areas and the Otway, Bass and Gippsland Basins with some potential also in the onshore Bowen-Surat, Cooper and Galilee Basins, said Cook.

The findings will help Australia's national prospects for curbing its greenhouse emissions from power generation, Cook said.

Meanwhile, the Gippsland region appears to have potential to store separated CO2 emissions resulting from the burning of brown coal in the Latrobe Valley.

"There is also scope to potentially store significant volumes in some Queensland basins such as the Bowen and the Galilee basins,” said Cook.

He added that the hunt was on to find suitable sites for large-scale carbon storage close to major industrial centres such as Sydney and Brisbane.

"We will start to look for potential sites both onshore and offshore, and also consider the option of storing CO2 in a number of 'boutique' sites in unminable coal seams [that are] capable of holding CO2 for long periods of geological time,” Cook said.

"Sites currently used for the extraction of coalbed methane may be very well suited to the long-term storage of CO2. However, the actual volumes they can hold remain to be assessed.”

Cook said research was finally starting to address the issue that Australia’s main greenhouse gas production was on the east coast, while the identified geosequestration potential was confined to the west coast.

The findings have been presented to industry and government meetings in NSW, Queensland, the ACT and WA, as well as at international carbon sequestration meetings.

CO2CRC said it planned to substantially lift its research effort into storage in coals in collaboration with Australian and international research organisations.

CO2CRC’s collaborating research organisations are CSIRO, Geoscience Australia, the University of NSW, the University of Melbourne, Adelaide University, Curtin University and the University of Queensland.