Preparing for the Future - "Carbon Capture Ready"

The Coolimba Power Project is leading the way with "Carbon Capture Ready" technology, which will allow up to 90 per cent of the future carbon emissions produced by the plant to be captured and stored.

The Coolimba Power Project will operate for at least 30 years, and during its operating life, will likely be subject to commercial constraints on the emission of carbon dioxide (CO₂). The Australian Federal Government intends to introduce a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, which would impact the Coolimba Power Station, and all other major coal-fired power stations in the country.

To minimise the impact of emissions charges on the power station, and as a demonstration of the seriousness with which Coolimba takes its environmental obligations, the Project will be built from the outset to be capable of rapid conversion to capture the CO₂ produced during the combustion of coal. Through this capture process CO₂ can be readily cooled and compressed, ready for transport as a liquid to a suitable underground storage location (sequestration).

In this way, about 90 per cent of the CO₂ produced by burning coal can be captured and stored, reducing the project emissions to about 20 per cent of the emissions currently being achieved by natural gas-fired combined cycle generating plants. The Coolimba project aims to build on the experiences of a number of demonstration carbon capture projects in Australia and overseas to become the first commercial scale “Carbon Capture Ready” project in Australia.

“Capturing” the CO₂ at the power station is only one step in the process of capturing and sequestering CO₂ so that greenhouse gases are not released into the atmosphere. Suitable locations will need to be found for the long-term storage of CO₂. Coolimba Power has been working with the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC), based at Curtin University, and AWE (a Mid West Gas Producer) to support the necessary research and development work to allow the CO₂ to be sequestered immediately after the carbon capture conversion is completed at Coolimba.

There remains a lot of work to do to identify and secure the sequestration sites, and will continue the development of the C0₂ capture technology.

Carbon Capture Ready Fact Sheet