Sustainable Development - Australian Coal Industry
Initiatives
The Australian coal
industry has several programs aimed at understanding
the role of coal in the transition to sustainable
development, and ensuring that the prospects for
reducing the environmental footprint of coal are
more widely understood in the community. The programs
include:
Coal
in a Sustainable Society (CISS)
CISS is a major program
of life cycle analysis investigations and communication.
It is examining the cradle to grave, or full life
cycle impacts, of current and developing technologies
for electricity generation and iron making. The
CISS program aims to:
- develop a better understanding of coal’s role
- provide an input into national and international
policy deliberations
- identify opportunities to improve the performance
of coal
CISS will achieve
this by taking a total system approach. It is
not a public relations program. The driving ethic
is transparent integrity — the bad will be reported
with the good, improvement opportunities will
be identified, assumptions clearly stated and
the work will be internationally peer-reviewed.
The total budget for the two-year program is $3
million. Funding is provided mainly through the
Australian Coal
Association Research Program (ACARP), coal
industry funds and from other international and
Australian stakeholders in the coal industry.
CISS results for the
first year have shown that coal is not as relatively
greenhouse unfriendly as commonly perceived. This
is in part because other energy sources have significant
greenhouse impacts during various stages of their
life cycle and, too often, these impacts are ignored.
A summary of findings
from stage 1 of the Coal in a Sustainable Society
(CISS) Project - 'Comparing Greenhouse Gas Emissions
from Different Energy Sources' is available for
download here
[pdf - 146KB].
Further information
on the CISS program is available at:
http://www.ciss.com.au
Co-operative
Research Centre for Coal in Sustainable Development
(CCSD)
The newly formed CRC for Sustainable Development
is supported by four Australian electricity generators,
three major coal producers, ACARP, four universities
and CSIRO. The new $60 million program builds
on the successful CRC for Black Coal Utilisation.
It’s objective is to become a centre of excellence
and influence in the Asia-Pacific region, to assist
with clean coal technology development and deployment
and to advise on the use of coal in a sustainable
development context.
The CRC is a world
first, combining think-tank and experimental capabilities.
It will enable the best coal researchers in Australia
to work closely with industry, external sustainability
advisers and international coal research organizations.
Further information on the CRC for Coal in
Sustainable Development is available at:
http://www.ccsd.biz
The
Australian Coal Association Sustainable Development
Program (ACASDP)
This program was established
to provide factual information about coal, its
environmental performance, its place in the future
energy mix and its important economic and social
contribution to key decision makers and a wide
range of other interested stakeholders.
(The ACASDP manages
and maintains this Web Site.)
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