There was an announcement on Sunday from the Queensland Government that the ZeroGen “clean coal” project will not be going ahead at this point in time. Till now already $192 million has been spent on the research works out of which Queensland Government has contributed $102 million. 

“We had hoped to have a clean coal power station up and running by 2015 but the fact is that the early research has shown us that this is not viable at this time on a commercial scale” said Premier Anna Bligh.

While Ms. Bligh said that the government will not walk away from controversial CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) technologies, but will change the focus of its efforts and undertaking further carbon storage site identification in other parts of the State which could become viable in the future.
  
The state government is now is now trying to change ZeroGen into an independent entity which can be owned and run by industry and dedicated to the accelerated development and deployment of Carbon Capture and Storage. 

There is no change in the Clean Coal Funds that is to assist the companies to compete for funding for the development of CCS in Queensland. The existing funds are $50 million of taxpayer money, in addition to a further $100 million from industry and the Commonwealth.
  
To date, no large-scale CCS projects have been produced anywhere in the world. The United States CCS initiative, FutureGen, isn’t expected to become reality before 2040.
  
Along with the technical and safety challenges, the clean coal technologies need more energy to work ie, mining and burning of coal and other fuels to create that energy; which may be a good thing for the Australian coal industry, but not so good for Australia’s environment.

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