APPEA chief executive Belinda Robinson today welcomed the announcement by Energy and Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane of the Australian Government’s $75 million support for the new gas-fired power station and carbon dioxide geo-sequestration project at Injune, near Roma.

“The Australian Government’s support for this gas-related package implicitly recognises the potential and significant role that gas will play as we move to achieving a substantially less greenhouse intensive future,” Robinson said.

APPEA has long advocated that natural gas play a prominent role as Australia and the world shift to a lower greenhouse energy mix, and combining an energy source 50% less greenhouse-intensive than coal with innovative CCS techniques would provide a double benefit in addressing the greenhouse challenge, according to Robinson.

“We have more than a century of supply of natural gas in this country and through the CO2 Cooperative Research Centre, lead the world in carbon capture and storage technology,” she said.

“It makes very good sense to marry these two strengths into a project of this kind.

“Innovative greenhouse solutions can be more than fanciful ideas that fill conference venues. Government and industry working in partnership means real projects delivering real solutions to very real problems.”

Robinson said the Government’s latest climate change initiative reinforced the findings of a report commissioned by the Australian Pipeline Industry Association that was released on Sunday.

The report, Meeting Increasing Energy Demand and the Reduction of Greenhouse Emissions in the Stationary Energy Sector, compared the full suite of renewable and fossil fuels in the future development of greenhouse-friendly energy generation. The report concluded that combining natural gas with geo-sequestration would prove to be very cost-competitive.