The Federal Government’s current energy policy says it is ‘technology agnostic’, and that carbon fuels will have a continued role as energy sources well into the future.

It talks often of ‘clean coal’ and of carbon capture, technologies that are intended to reduce the emissions of exist fossil fuel energy sources. Despite these technologies being roundly criticised by environmentalists, the Government insists they have a major role to play.

To that end, it has invested money in developing the two technologies. But a new report from the Australian National Audit Office (ANOA) suggests that while the Government is talking the talk, it is not spending the money. Its commitment to both clean coal and carbon capture technology has dissipated, and its much vaunted programs in these areas have fallen well short of their objectives.

The ANAO report is written in bland bureaucratese, but behind the weasel words is a strong criticism of how the programs have been administered and how effective they have been. The report casts serious doubt on whether the Government is really serious about any commitment to helping develop the technologies.

Most of the energy industry believes they are rubbish technologies anyway. One can only assume the Government is also starting to think that way – if they really want these technologies to work, the half-hearted commitment exposed by the ANOA report shows they are letting themselves down and wasting taxpayer’s money.

The report looks at the Government’s administration of the National Low Emissions Coal Initiative (NLECI) program and the Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) program, and Low Emission Technologies for Fossil Fuels (LETFF) program

Some quotes from the report may allow you to draw your own conclusions They are strong words, coming from an auditor:

“Key performance measures for the programs provide limited insight into the extent to which the programs are achieving the LETFF strategic objective of accelerating the deployment of technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

“Funding under the NLECI program was originally directed towards five election commitments, three of which were unable to be fulfilled due to technical and/or financial reasons. The selection of replacement projects was not supported by a clear strategy, and therefore their alignment to the original election commitments is unclear.”

“The CCS Flagships projects are yet to reach the stage of deployable technology as originally envisaged in the program design. It is unclear whether the program is capable of delivering on its strategic policy objective as the program is due to close in 2020, and all program funding is currently committed.”

“There have been ongoing reductions in the available funding for each of the NLECI and CCS Flagships programs which have not been supported by a strategic approach to applying remaining funding across the projects.”

“Risk management plans for the NLECI program were not identified until the first quarter of 2011–12, despite the program commencing in 2008.”

“None of the CCS Flagships projects met the original timeframe or reached the stage of deployable technology as originally envisaged in the program design.”

“Over the life of both programs, funding was significantly reduced—to around half the original NLECI program funding and around 75 percent of the CCS Flagships program funding. The program was not supported by a framework for monitoring the impact of the changing funding environment. As a consequence, when the funding envelope for both programs was reduced, there was no clear strategy for determining how the reduced funding would be applied across the programs.”

The full ANAO report is available here.