Greens say Labor wasting money with clean coal policy. 25/02/2007. ABC News Online

Greens say Labor wasting money with clean coal policy


Greens say Labor wasting money with clean coal policy

The Greens say Labor's plan to put $500 million into clean coal research would be a waste of money.

Labor leader Kevin Rudd has promised the funding to support three or four of the most viable clean coal technologies and ensure that clean coal is supplied to the national electricity grid by 2020.

'This is critical for Australia and I want to make sure that we get there in the end,' he said.

But Greens Senator Bob Brown says the search for clean coal will be too expensive and too slow.

'The problem with the search for clean coal, it may turn out to be the search to turn lead into gold - it simply may not be available, at least in a way that's going to make coal competitive with other energies,' he said.

'Labor should be following the Greens into pushing the technologies we do have available, which can provide both base-load power and the power for new industries and indeed peak load.'

Senator Brown says Labor has its priorities wrong and should put the money into promoting renewable energy.

'The $500 million should be going into the available technologies like solar thermal, like geothermal and of course energy efficiency and we should be getting behind the technologies that are a"