The Australian Prime Minister set up an Australian billionaire ($ 738m) fund on Wednesday to support low-emissions technology, including photography and air storage, while promoting his government’s green credentials a few months before the election.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison expects the secret services to match his government’s $ 500 million Australian ($ 369m) budget.
“Australia could be a world leader in the development of low-emission technology that is both cheap and risky,” Morrison said in a statement.
The Conservative Coalition wants the fund to be run by Clean Energy Finance Corp, a state-owned green bank set up to increase investment in the clean energy sector.
But this may need to change the law because the agency can invest in technologies that have proven to work for short periods of time, such as wind and solar. It cannot afford to invest a lot of money in experimental technology with long-term potential such as drawing and air storage.
The new fund will address the gap in the Australian market in which small, complex, technology-based startups can be seen as “too risky to make money,” he said.
Minister for Industry, Energy and Pollution Control Angus Taylor said a change in the law was needed for Australia to achieve its goals by 2050.
“There are a lot of people, when it comes to the weather, who want to destroy the industry,” Taylor told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“They say we want the industry to go or agriculture is affected. That’s when we start. We start with the answer: low-emission technologies that can reduce emissions,” Taylor added.
The opposition center on the left-hand side of the Labor Party cited the possibility of legislative assistance in the Senate if the government promised new funding and did not cut funding for other white power plants.
“If this is real money, then we will see in detail” the demands law, Labor spokesman for climate change and power Chris Bowen said.
Australia’s new carbon emissions plan comes after Morrison was widely criticized at the United Nations summit in Glasgow, Scotland, for failing to set 2030 goals.
Australia wants to reduce smoke by 26% to 28% below the 2005 standards, while other countries have made greater promises.
With the Australian elections expected by May, Morrison on Tuesday announced plans for $ 250 million Australian ($ 185m) plans to expect 30% of new passenger cars and the sale of lightweight cars in Australia to be electric or plug-in. 2030.
Less than 2% of new cars sold in Australia are electric, and the transportation sector is the main reason why Australia, per capita, is one of the worst emissions in the world.
Australia is one of the world’s largest exporters of coal and liquid gas worldwide.
Carrying and storage of carbon involves drawing carbon at the source, inserting it and then inserting it deep into the ground.
Richie Mercian, a former Australian government spokesman on climate change, said the new fund “will support oil-based technologies such as painting and storing gas” instead of removing burning oil.
Australia is home to the world’s largest ports of air for the Chevron’s Gorgon natural gas project on Barrow Island on the northwest coast. About 60 such sites are active or under construction worldwide.
Gorgon project has saved more than 5 million tons of carbon dioxide since its launch in 2019.
But Chevron announced in July that it had failed to meet its goal of storing 80% of the plant’s emissions, or about 4 million tons a year.
Peter Milne, a former oil and gas engineer, says that Chevron blew only 30% of the promised carbon.
