Buried at sea: State hunts for underground home for carbon emissions

A search has begun off the coast of Gippsland’s Ninety Mile Beach for a place to bury millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide beneath the seabed as a way to cut Victoria’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The Minerals Council of Australia said carbon capture and 

storage could play a long-term role in reducing emissions

 from coal-fired power stations in Gippsland.

Researchers hope to find porous rock formations deep beneath the ocean, into which the state will inject gas piped from fossil-fuel based industries such as the Latrobe Valley’s coal-fired power stations.

The Andrews and Turnbull governments are spending $150 million to try to kickstart the carbon capture and storage project in Gippsland, but say it will only go ahead if the fossil fuels industry backs the technology with a significant financial investment of its own.

Critics argue more than $1 billion has already been spent on carbon capture and storage trials and pilot projects in Australia, with very little to show for it.

Read Adam Carey’s story in The Age - “Buried at sea: State hunts for underground home for carbon emissions.”

(Just a few years ago a leading climate scientist said, in answer to a question of carbon capture a storage that it was a yet to be proved technology, noting that had succeeded in a few small trial sites, but no one was really sure how the process could be scaled up, successfully. I'm far from sure that there has been much success in firming up the process and the Minerals Council would certainly endorse this move as it does little more than forestalls the adoption of a zero carbon way of life, a change that would see the demise of large parts of its industry - Robert McLean)