Twenty five years ago, on this day, February 26, 1998, yet more promises of clean coal were made in Australia, by eerie coincidence the world’s number one coal exporter…
RESEARCH laboratories where scientists will work to make Australian coal the “cleanest” in the world, will be opened by Premier Bob Carr today.
The Ian Stewart Wing of the chemical engineering laboratories at Newcastle University form part of the co-operative research centre for black coal utilisation.
The centre, partially government funded, was established in 1995 to carry out world class research to maximise the value and performance of Australian black coal resources
Anon. 1998. Tests for green coal. Daily Telegraph, 26 February.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 366.1ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
At a Federal level, Prime Minister John Howard was resolutely anti-climate action (even after extracting an amazingly generous deal at Kyoto). At the state level, New South Wales and Queensland wanted to export more and more coal, obviously.
The CSIRO, having been lukewarm/opposed to renewables for yonks, was talking up the prospects of “clean coal.”
What I think we can learn from this
Research and Development organisations are largely captured by powerful/rich actors, via various mechanisms that are not hard to understand but unless understood ‘in the round’ can be dismissed as ‘conspiracy theory’. New technologies find it very very hard to get traction…. (Mark Diesendorf has written extensively about this, by the way).
What happened next
Clean coal is still coming, just like full communism was under Brezhnev, and just like nuclear fusion is. Now, about that bridge you were interested in buying from me you know, the one in Sydney… I can bribe the official writing the tender documents, but I need some cash from you up front…
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.