On this day Thursday, 3 April 2008
The World’s (then) “largest CO2 storage demo plant” opens in Victoria.
THE launch of Australia’s first carbon dioxide storage demonstration project is a “key strategic initiative in the global challenge of addressing climate change”, according to Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Mitchell Hooke.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 385ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that carbon capture and storage had first been proposed as a solution – a partial solution – to carbon dioxide build up in the mid 1970s by an Italian physicist, Cesar Marchetti, as part of the whole IASSA attempt to offer solutions.
The specific context was that was10 years previously, in the late 1990s the GEODISC programme had gotten underway, and in 2001 the Prime Minister’s Science, Economics and Industry Council then chaired by Roy Batterham, (who was part time also the chief technology officer for Rio Tinto), had put forward CCS as a useful way of side-stepping climate policy and the need for behaviour change and societal transformation. There had been further insane promises about CCS during the 2000s and then in 2008 we see this pilot project begin.
What I think we can learn from this is that these fantasy technologies have a long history, and it’s not one of success.
What happened next: Otway kept storing trivial amounts of CO2 and it’s not clear to me that any meaningful lessons were learned. But I’m not a geologist. The big CCS project in Australia is Gorgon as per Chevron, and you can read about its stunning world changing successes here.
Also on this day:
April 3, 1980 – US news anchorman Walter Cronkite on the greenhouse effect
April 3, 1991- Does coal have a future?
April 3, 2000 – Australian diplomats spread bullshit about climate. Again