Over the past couple of months, the Government has held a parliamentary inquiry and a public forum into the issue, as well as throwing millions of dollars into research and development projects and leading a push to change international guidelines.

Subsea carbon capture

Earlier this month, 17 member countries of the London Convention voted in favour of an Australian-sponsored amendment to allow the offshore burial of greenhouse gas emissions captured from such sources as coal or gas-fired power stations.

“Like onshore geosequestration, storing carbon dioxide beneath the ocean floor will be an important part of our ‘multi-track’ response to climate change,” Environment Minister Ian Campbell said at the time.

In Australia, Bass Strait is currently considered one of the most favourable sites for subsea geosequestration. Its oil and gas reservoirs are depleting and it is located close to the La Trobe Valley coal hub.

Grants

Federal and state government grants totalling $230 million will be injected into three carbon capture and geological storage projects proposed for Queensland.

The Fairview Power Project will receive $75 million from the Australian Government’s Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund, to build a new power plant at Injune, near Roma.

The $445 million project, expected to start construction next April and be completed by 2015, involves extracting methane from coal seams located too far underground to be mined. The methane will be burnt in a 100MW power station and CO2 emissions are to be captured and injected back into the coal seam.

CS Energy also received $50 million from the fund to build the world’s first Oxy-Fuel Demonstration Project to retrofit the Callide power plant.

Due for completion by 2015, this $188 million demonstration project involves burning coal in an oxygen-rich environment to produce electricity. The resulting exhaust gases, which include a high concentration of CO2, can be captured and stored underground.

A third project, Hazelwood 2030, will also receive Queensland Government funding to demonstrate the capture of CO2 from an existing coal-fired power plant.

Gorgon

The Federal Government will also contribute $60 million towards the Chevron-led Gorgon carbon capture storage project at Barrow Island, off Western Australia.

The $850 million project is expected to be the largest of its kind in the world.

It plans to bury 125 million tonnes of excess carbon dioxide produced during the life of the project on Barrow Island, off the Pilbara coast. Gorgon gas tends to have high CO2 levels, which is the reason the joint venture is examining this expensive option.

The government funding will be conditional on the Gorgon gas project meeting environmental approvals, which the WA government last week cleared the way for, subject to strict environmental conditions.

No sequestration without taxation

A carbon emissions trading regime is now on the political agenda.

In September, companies such as Santos and Origin Energy told a parliamentary inquiry installing geosequestration at existing power stations was likely to double the cost of electricity and would not be viable without a carbon price signal.

Then in November, Federal Treasurer Peter Costello spoke out in support of a global carbon trading scheme to fight climate change, saying Australia could not afford to be left out of any new international agreement on carbon emissions trading.

Only a month previously, Costello had said he didn’t support carbon trading.

Testing new technology

Meanwhile, technology junior Cool Energy has said ongoing field trials of its CryoCell technology have delivered positive results.

Managing director Jessie Inman said CryoCell removed CO2 from gas streams as a liquid that can be readily used for geosequestration or miscible flood-enhanced oil recovery.

“Trials thus far have confirmed Cool Energy’s expectations regarding many aspects of the process performance,” Inman said.

Cool Energy’s team, to which a full-time researcher has just been added, is now working to prepare its plant at Arc Energy’s Xyris field for higher CO2 testing.

The modified plant is due for completion soon and is expected to be able to test CO2 levels of 30-40% and possibly higher.

“We’re continuing a number of discussions with potential commercial partners with high CO2 levels in their natural gas fields and hope to have the first commercial project identified and confirmed within the next few months,” Inman said.