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17 November, 2008
For the first time, national legislation has been enacted to govern carbon capture and storage or CCS. A new Australian law creates a setting which encourages companies to invest with confidence in CCS technology and inject and sequester CO2 offshore.
Tony Maher from ICEM affiliate the Construction Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), has welcomed the new legislation: “Large scale CCS requires a regulatory framework if it is going to happen. Governments need to act quickly to put that in place – in Australia and around the world. We won’t get investment in new power stations, or the retrofitting of existing ones, until there are pipelines and storage sites. We need appropriate laws and regulations for all three stages.”
Australia also recently announced the formation of the Global CCS Institute, which it has proposed to be the coordinating body for the G8 commitment to develop 20 CCS facilities by 2020. The formation of the Institute is strongly supported by the CFMEU.
At a major coal conference in India in December 2007, the ICEM along with major coal mining unions called for an international body to develop and share CCS technology, The position was strengthened at the 2008 ICEM Global Mining Conference which took place in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Australia and the CFMEU have shown once again they are on the cutting edge of addressing global warming in a way that does not cut short jobs in the coal industry. The need for pooled resources and an international agency to propel the development of CCS will be one of the positions advocated by the International Trade Union Council at the December meeting of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland. The ICEM along with a number of its affiliates, including the CFMEU, will attend.