David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thought I would give the House some reflections on some of the technology innovations that have been happening in this wide brown land as we try to solve the climate conundrum by technology, not by taxes. I would like to update the House on what we've been doing regarding carbon capture and storage, which, to most people, seems like some far-off acronym put out by the former coalition government, the Howard government, who funded carbon capture and storage flagships. But, on a deeper analysis of what's been happening around the world, it's actually quite a mature technology.

I was very pleased to see that carbon capture has been part of gas extraction for many years. The technology of capturing carbon is well established and has actually been used to deliver both more condensate and more gas from gas fields. The paradigm is that, by capturing the CO2 and other noxious gases that are made when industrial processes or electricity generation by burning black coal happens, one can decrease the environmental footprint of the electricity generation or the industrial process.

In the north of Australia, there is a huge carbon capture and storage project that is actually quite mature. Over in the US, there are second- and third-generation projects which are capturing CO2 and burying it in deep, sound, stable geological formations. The carbon is not kept in a big balloon under the surface. It actually gets dissolved into porous and permeable rock and is quite stable. But then the geological formation has to have a cap over it. They have identified another huge reservoir, apart from the one that's currently being used at Barrow Island. In mid-central and southern Queensland, there's a huge reservoir that could pipe CO2 from the coal-fired power stations in that area in a hub-and-spoke model.

We're all about reducing carbon emissions. That is the paradigm that's been set by our international commitments. Everyone assumes that, to do that, you have to use solar or wind. But the problem with solar or wind is that the modern industrial world runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in rainy weeks, in wet seasons, when it's cloudy and overcast, when it's hot and the wind isn't blowing, or when there isn't sun to run solar panels. Everyone talks about the massive increase in install capacity of renewable generation in this nation. This gets everyone excited, but, unless that generation is available 24 hours a day and seven days a week, it's not going to solve our problem. That's why there's the requirement to have an energy system that has a certain amount of base load that is there pumping out electricity around the clock, every day of the week, every month of the year, come rain, hail or shine.

If we were to shut down all our coal-fired power stations—our whole electricity network was built on that in the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties because of our natural advantage in having coal-fired power. But a lot of those original power stations weren't that efficient. They were like an old diesel truck from the 1950s—they weren't very efficient either. But new coal-fired power stations are like the new diesel trucks that you see with twin turbos, common-rail technology and all the catalytic converters. All the technology that you can apply means that modern diesel trucks are hyperefficient, and they extract every last gram of energy out of the liquid fuel that's put in them. Again, it's a question of technology solving our problems, not taxes.

I think my time has run out. That is enough for this evening, Mr Speaker. It has been a fascinating sojourn for many people who hadn't realised the wonders of modern technology. (Time expired)