Outlining the CFMEU's new stance on climate change, which has been adopted primarily out of concern for the coal industry's future, on the ABC's 7.30 Report on Wednesday, national president Tony Maher openly criticised producers' commitment to pursuing clean coal technology.
"To date, the Australian coal industry has committed $300 million over five years to fund research into the reduction of carbon emissions and for the development of clean coal technology," he said.
"We believe this is woefully inadequate. It represents about 15c per tonne of coal per year. We believe that a more reasonable figure should be $1 per tonne to provide at least $2 billion from the industry to fast-track the development of clean coal."
Speaking to MiningNewsPremium.net on Friday, Maher said the call for greater funding had not been dismissed by the coal industry, which was a positive sign.
"I don't think we're quite pushing an open door, but it's inevitable that they will stump up more money because if they don't events will overtake them," he said. "The public is getting restless with projections about a solution decades away."
The CFMEU recently made the decision to pick up the clean coal baton after tracking the climate change debate for years.
"Because we represent 20,000 coal and power generation workers, we've been very keen to follow whether there is a technological solution to the emissions problem and it appears that there is," Maher said.
"What I say to our members is we've got no job security unless the emissions problem is solved. We have to get behind initiatives to resolve it. Any delay is a bad thing."
While there are various forms of clean coal technology, the basic aim of all of them is getting carbon dioxide emissions from coal used in power generation as close to zero as possible.
Rather than being a completely new science, Maher said it was more a case of finding the best combination of tried and tested technologies.
"It's a matter of taking all the component parts and putting it into a demonstration plant on a power station application firstly and making it commercially viable," he said.
"That takes money and to a certain extent it takes time, but I think the public is running out of patience."
Maher was confident the technology could be proven in time to make a difference. "The industry wouldn't have put up $300 million if it was a dead duck," he said. "They're very canny with a dollar."
By way of response to the CFMEU, Australian Coal Association executive director Mark O'Neill suggested on ABC Radio last week that coal producers should not be forced to shoulder the funding burden alone.
O'Neill was at pains to point out that while mining companies had contributed $300 million to clean coal research, electricity generators had so far contributed nothing. He also floated the argument that the public sector should foot some of the bill, as they would be the eventual beneficiaries of clean, low-cost energy.
