Fifteen years ago, on this day, April 16, 2008, trades unions and greenies and companies tried to get CCS ‘moving.’
“In April 2008 the Australian Coal Association (ACA) proposed — in conjunction with WWF Australia, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union and the Climate Institute in Australia — that the Rudd Labor government establish a National Carbon Capture and Storage Taskforce. The taskforce, they proposed, “would be charged with developing and implementing a nationally coordinated plan to oversee rapid demonstration and commercialisation of 10,000 GWh of carbon capture and storage (CCS) electricity per year by 2020.”
Here’s a picture of the top of the press release
And here’s a link to a pdf – https://www.sourcewatch.org/images/b/b4/ACA_Media_Release_160408.pdf
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 387.3ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
While trying to become Australian Prime Minister, the Labor Party’s Kevin Rudd had used climate change as an issue with which to paint incumbent Prime Minister John Howard as an uncaring dinosaur. Rudd had also used “carbon capture and storage” as a way of calming the nerves of coalminers in vital states (Queensland and New South Wales). Now a coalition of pro-coal types and “greenies” were trying to get some money. And money they would get…
What I think we can learn from this
Wanna win elections? Make big promises. Whether they can be kept or not will depend…
Technological salvationism fantasies need institutional and organisational backing. Lots of it. Players know this, and get the taxpayer to fund it.
What happened next
Rudd threw 100 million Australian taxpayers’ dollars at the creation of a “Global Carbon Capture and Storage institute”.
Those projects all up and running by 2020, then twelve years in the future? Yeah, nah.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.