Technology - the key to sustainability

The NSW Minerals Council recognised that climate change was a major issue more than a decade ago and the mining industry is now positioning itself to be part of the solution - it is currently developing sophisticated technology to reduce emissions and to capture and store carbon.

The NSW mining industry has focused on reducing its environmental footprint for the past 20 years; and in the past 10 years, that focus has broadened to include climate change.

My focus is to move the industry beyond compliance and I see technology as the key to sustainability - rather than imposing enormous costs on the Australian economy through regulation such as the Carbon Pollution reduction Scheme (CPRS).

The CPRS scheme is of wide-scale concern - not just because of its flawed design, but because it will impose a scheme on Australia not seen anywhere else in the world.

In mining alone, the current version of the legislation will cost the industry $10-14 billion. No other minerals-producing region has to bear this cost, so it will be very hard for us to remain competitive with the rest of the world.

More than one million Australians work in energy-intensive businesses and if these businesses become more expensive to run within Australia than similar businesses outside Australia, they will move offshore.

The key role Australia should be playing is getting an aligned climate change policy among major players such as China, so we can establish a global position. Then we can adopt the same policy that the major emitters adopt. While costs to businesses will go up, our economy will not be uncompetitive - it’s the same for everyone around the world.

The mining industry is not against emissions control, but I believe we need to make sure we’ve done the best job of designing the scheme, ensure a transition period for businesses to adjust to it and also encourage consumers to change their behaviour. The current scheme actually compensates consumers for their behaviour by putting the cost on business.

A decade ago, the Australian coal industry recognised that climate change was a major problem. Coal was a big part of that problem and so it was essential that we as an industry became part of the solution.

Back then, an initiative to promote the development of low emission technology was launched by federal and state governments, the CSIRO, research centres for CO₂ electricity generators and industry representatives. No other coal industry in the world has established a technology fund like it - to date, voluntary contributions by industry have totalled more than a billion dollars.

The capture and storage of carbon is just one technology being developed as part of this scheme and I believe this will be the most important technology being developed for climate change mitigation globally. If we don’t have a means of capturing carbon, we cannot stop the growth in emissions. The reality is that the world does dig up and burn billions of tonnes of coal and uses many millions of cubic metres of gas and oil every year and will continue to do so - whatever we do in Australia.

Once carbon dioxide is captured from power stations it needs to be compressed to liquid and then piped to storage sites such as disused oilwells or sedimentary rock basins that feature low permeability and pressure. These basins have contained oil and gas for millions of years without it leaking it anywhere. In Norway, a million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year have been stored in rock basins for 12-13 years now. The Norwegian government has been monitoring levels and there has been no movement or leakage to date.

The NSW government and industry are jointly funding a project to identify suitable storage sites, but the major issue will be that they need to be near power stations for it to be an economically viable solution.

Helping to develop technology like this is a key part of our responsibility as an industry and, realistically, we anticipate the commercialisation of this technology to be around 2017-2020. To be successful it will require a lot of focus, a lot of money and enormous public investment. Australians haven’t yet wrapped their heads around the kind of investment that will be required for renewable energy.

* Nikki Williams is CEO of the NSW Minerals Council and has worked for Shell and Exxon in the coal, oil, gas and chemical industries of Africa, Asia and Europe. She has a PhD in International Relations in Terrorism, serving on international Boards and government advisory panels as well as being an accredited energy expert with the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe.