Green for go with brown-coal station ADAM MORTON April 14, 2010...

Green for go with brown-coal station ADAM MORTON
April 14, 2010


VICTORIA is a step closer to a new brown-coal power plant after a Chinese company announced it had won a contract to build a long-delayed $750 million station in the Latrobe Valley.

The state-owned China National Electric Equipment Corporation said it expected to sign a contract with Melbourne-based HRL on April 22 to build a demonstration plant that would use new technology to run on low-grade coal.

The announcement, in the China Daily newspaper, follows several false starts for the Morwell plant, which is backed by $100 million federal and $50 million state funding.

Having promised to start operating in 2009 using a coal drying and gasification technique said to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent, HRL had problems raising finance for the plant amid uncertainty over the proposed emissions trading scheme.

Chinese manufacturer Harbin Power withdrew its 50 per cent stake in the project last year. Around the same time HRL rebranded the controversial plant, dropping ''clean coal'' and adopting ''dual gas''.

China National Electric Equipment Corporation president Zhao Ruolin said the coal-fired station could be a major breakthrough in power generation. He did not mention gas.

''Coal is a one-off energy source and at present only the high-grade variety is used. By using the low-grade variety, we can extend the life of coal,'' he told the China Daily.

HRL, formerly the publicly owned Herman Research Laboratories, did not respond to requests for comment.

In September last year, the company said construction of the plant was expected to begin in 2010 and generation start in 2013. It said the 550-megawatt plant would create up to 350 jobs in construction and 35 during operation.

A spokesman for Victorian Energy Minister Peter Batchelor yesterday said the development of the plant marked an important step towards a near-zero-emissions energy future, though that future was still some way off.

''HRL has indicated previously that they would announce their engineering, procurement and construction contractor in 2010 and, from this report, it seems they are on the verge of signing a contractor,'' spokesman Matthew Hillard said.

Environment Victoria campaigns director Mark Wakeham questioned whether the plant would go ahead. He said the government should be examining ways to replace coal, rather than funding experiments into whether coal-fired power could have a future.

Australian Manufacturing Workers Union Gippsland regional organiser Steve Dodd said he was concerned most of the construction would take place in China before the pre-fabricated plant was shipped to Victoria. He wanted to see the plant go ahead, but had not heard confirmation that it would.