The $40 million CO2CRC Otway Project, launched in Victoria yesterday, is the world's largest global research and carbon storage demonstration project aimed at showing carbon capture and storage as an effective way to stem rising greenhouse gas emissions.
In order to demonstrate the technical and environmental feasibility of a coal storage program, 100,000 tonnes of CO2 will be injected to a depth of 2km. The area will then be monitored to establish whether any CO2 escapes from underground.
Hooke said projects such as these are necessary in order to find a balance between the environment and people's power needs.
“There simply cannot be a global solution to managing climate change without a clean coal strategy as part of a suite of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in an international response to managing climate change," Hooke said.
“Economic and energy security concerns mean that coal will remain an indispensable contributor to energy generation in the years ahead … for the foreseeable future, Australia and the world will continue to rely on coal and other fossil fuels to meet energy demand.
“It is therefore vital to have projects which further the goal of achieving successful demonstration and deployment of carbon capture and storage to provide clean coal power generation."
