Nick Xenophon reluctant to back Coalition plan for CEFC to fund carbon capture

The key Senate powerbroker Nick Xenophon has warned the Turnbull government he has “real reservations” about allowing the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to invest in carbon capture and storage technology.

A carbon capture and storage trial site in in Germany.
The Coalition plans to allow the CEFC to invest in
 CCS projects but the technology is yet to be
demonstrated to be cost effective at scale.

Xenophon told Guardian Australia on Tuesday night the government should, instead of rewriting the rules of its so-called “green” bank, just knuckle down and deliver an emissions intensity trading scheme for Australia’s electricity sector.

Allowing electricity generators to engage in a form of carbon trading, the senator said, would deliver policy certainty, and “deal with the investment drought”.

Before the introduction of government legislation amending the CEFC’s investment rules to federal parliament on Wednesday, Labor is also signalling it won’t support the measure.

Read Katherine Murphy’s story on The Guardian - “Nick Xenophon reluctant to back Coalition plan for CEFC to fund carbon capture.”