Australian taxpayers are the only financial backers for Kevin Rudd’s $100 million-a-year global clean coal initiative, as world leaders have failed to match their resounding endorsement of the idea at the G8 meeting last July with a single dollar.
Praised by US President Barack Obama as a “significant” announcement, the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute, which is charged with speeding the development and take-up of clean coal technology, has attracted more than 200 of the world’s biggest economies and companies as members.
But to date their only financial commitment is to guarantee $10 in the event the institute goes broke.
Last night, the Prime Minister’s office played down the lack of financial support from other governments, saying the institute’s board was responsible for capital raising but to date had been primarily focused on securing membership and conducting a global audit of the state of carbon capture and storage projects and research of the technology.
The opposition said it showed other countries believed CCS was costly and that a plant would not be commercially operating for at least 20 years.
Mr Rudd’s spokeswoman said it was anticipated CCS technology would be discussed during the US President’s mid-year visit to Australia.
“The Australian government is pleased that the GCCSI is co-ordinating and helping fund international work to deploy and commercialise CCS,” she said.
“Investing in clean energy and energy efficiency remain key planks of the government’s climate change policy, including our $4.5 billion Clean Energy Initiative.”
Dale Seymour, the institute’s senior vice-president of strategy, told The Australian: “The fact that we’ve got 30-odd national governments and some sub-national governments as members is a great first-up indication that they support (the institute).
“It’s not about the money in the first instance. Someone had to come out and provide the leadership and the direction in the first instance and the Australian Prime Minister has done that.”
Mr Seymour said one of the institute’s medium-term agendas was “to create a value proposition sufficient that others will see value in investing in us”.
“Their obligation to be a member was that they would promote and facilitate and actively engage in the acceleration of CCS projects and they’ve all agreed to do that,” he said.
The institute expects this year to hand out $50m in funding in direct support for global carbon capture and storage projects around the world.
Mr Seymour said the institute had received about $500m in applications for the funding, which would be used to burst through barriers to their implementation.
It is also commissioning detailed work on how to overcome financial, commercial, policy, regulatory and legal issues to enable projects to proceed.
Opposition energy spokesman Ian Macfarlane said the failure of world governments to make a financial contribution to the institute reflected the fact that “everyone from Rudd down knows there is not going to be one of these commercial plants commence for at least 20 years”.
At the G8 meeting in L’Aquila last year, governments had been looking for an announcement that sounded great, but “everyone has done their sums” and the technology was too expensive, he said.
Mr Macfarlane said Mr Obama’s announcement of $US8bn ($8.9bn) in government guarantees for nuclear power plants in the US, announced last month, showed the President’s thinking. If the Australian government were serious it would look at nuclear power for base load electricity generation, he added.
Mr Macfarlane said Mr Rudd should have learned the lesson from the Howard government’s involvement in the AP6 (the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate) where the Americans and other major countries had enthusiastically backed the plan but had not contributed substantial funds.
Mr Seymour said that, although the timing was “tight”, he was confident the G8’s goal of launching 20 carbon capture and storage demonstration plants by the end of this year could be met.
There were a significant number of large-scale proposals around the world being assessed in Europe, the US and Canada in addition to the $2.5bn CCS flagships initiative in Australia.
Mr Obama has announced a taskforce aimed at getting up to 10 plants up and running by 2016 and EU nations have $6.3bn set aside in order to develop CCS and renewable energy projects.
