CO2CRC welcomes the Australian Government's first Low Emissions Technology Statement

THE CO₂ Cooperative Research Centre (CO2CRC) has welcomed today’s release of the first Low Emissions Technology Statement by Angus Taylor, Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, and its recognition of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) as one of the five identified priority low emissions technologies for Australia.

“Developing economic ‘stretch’ goals for each priority technology and annual reporting on progress towards these goals provides a measurable commitment to the long-term strategic importance of these areas and an imperative for their cost-effective deployment," CO2CRC chief executive David Byers said.

“As Australia’s leading Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) research organisation, CO2CRC believes that the stretch goal for CCS ($20 per tonne for CO₂ compression, transport and storage) is achievable with the right level of investment in technology development and project deployment.

"This is also consistent with the conclusions of leading independent academic and industry technoeconomic studies. Establishing the goal will encourage the development, application and scaling up of low emission and low-cost technologies, strengthening industry and delivering more jobs.

“Australia is uniquely positioned to be at the forefront of the global scale-up of CCS technologies," he said. "It has ready access to the latest carbon capture and storage technologies and expertise, some of the world’s best deep sedimentary basins in which to store CO₂ and an internationally recognised resources industry and researchers.

"Local and international researchers and industry have also been supported for more than a decade by CO2CRC’s Otway National Research Facility in south west Victoria, which is one of the most advanced field scale CCS research sites globally.

“With around two-thirds of emissions in Australia coming from outside the power generation sector, technologies like CCS with broad application across the economy, are vital to achieving long-term emissions reduction goals while maintaining Australia’s economic resilience.”    

“The value of CCS is its versatility as a technology. Its applications extend from natural gas processing and power generation to steel and cement production, where emissions are hard to abate due to inherent process emissions and high temperature heat requirements," Mr Byers said.

"Producing clean hydrogen from gas or coal paired with CCS also offers the most cost-effective, reliable, and flexible pathway to large-scale hydrogen production.

“CCS projects also offer a large-scale emissions reduction opportunity (millions of tonnes per annum (Mtpa) for 20+ years), which is an order of magnitude higher than many other abatement options.

"For example, the Gorgon LNG Project is progressively ramping up to full capacity of up to 4Mtpa of safe and permanent storage of CO₂. The Victorian CarbonNet Project plans to geologically store around 5Mtpa CO₂ each year and Santos is examining a large-scale commercial CCS project to be located in the Cooper Basin with a scalable potential to store up to 20 Mt of CO₂ per year," he said.

www.co2crc.com.au

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