I was doing a bit of digging around after my post titled “Renewable Energy Regression” to find out if there were any double standards around planning regulations for coal power stations vs wind farms.
Well is just so happens there is a very big double standard. You may remember that I reported that;
“the Baillieu Government announced their new wind policy – banning new wind farms in whole regions of the state, and allowing any resident across Victoria to put a stop to a wind farm within 2km of their home.”
So we know that any person can veto a wind farm within 2km of their home, but can they do the same with a coal power plant? Well it appears that they cannot. It appears that they have no voice at all when it comes to the brown coal fired power stations in Victoria. Last year, before approval by the EPA, 4,000 people objected to the EPA regarding the HRL proposal – the most objections that the EPA has ever received on any issue. The HRL proposed “Dual Gas Power Station” which has now been EPA approval and is backed financiall by the Federal and State Governments will be an;
“integrated drying gasification combined cycle (IDGCC) which can reduce emissions of CO2 from brown coal-fired power generation by 30 per cent and reduce water consumption by 50 per cent, compared to current best practice for brown coal power generation in the Latrobe Valley.”- Peter Batchelor, 2008.
Now the power station, the company claimed back in 2009, “will generate up to 550 megawatts of power using syngas (synthetic gas from the drying and gasification of brown coal) and natural gas (as a start up and supplementary fuel).” It has since been downgraded to a 300 megawatt plant using the same technology.
However this still makes the HRL power station as dirty as a black coal fired power station. Hardly clean energy in my books.
Anyway, back to planning. So we have acertained that local citizens can veto a wind farm, and cannot veto a coal plant, even when the EPA asked for submissions in August 2010 and received many thousands of objections. So how close is this proposed power station to homes? Lets take a look at an aerial map (click to enlarge).
As you probably expected by now, there are about 250 homes within 2 km of the proposed site for the HRL power station in Morwell, Victoria. I bet most didn’t even know it was going to be built there. Talk about dual standard for energy planning. Me thinks that Big Coal may be in bed with a certain government, then again, that is not news at all. We all knew that.
If you want the good oil (pardon the pun) about the history of the HRL proposal, you could do no better than visiting SourceWatch.org
Moving towards a cleaner energy future? Pigs arse we are!