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Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Preaching to the Unconverted

Tim Flannery preaches the oxymoronic clean coal message to the somewhat sceptical Australian Workers Union biannual conference.

He believes that there may be no market for clean coal in Australia, but that there is likely a very large overseas market.

I'm sure that there is a bit more too it than "Let's export our pollution".

His argument is that Australia does not possess the right geological conditions to support the clean coal process, which injects carbon dioxide emissions into the ground rather than releasing them into the atmosphere. In addition, be believes geothermal energy and renewable energy such as solar power have greater potential here in Australia.

Not sure this message will go down too well in Queensland, which has some of the largest brown coal deposits in the world and the power plants set up to use and abuse it.

Being a descendant of a coal miner and the victim of more than a few frustrating sessions lighting coal fires, I still have a hard time with the term clean coal.

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