Do you think carbon capture has a future in Australia?

I don't think carbon capture and storage has a future anywhere. The infrastructure needs of setting it up - for capture, transport and storage of the CO2 - are just so huge that it makes far more sense to leapfrog it and go straight to renewables.

And, fundamentally, why would we intentionally create another waste stream, with vast quantities of climate-changing CO2 that could leak at any time, when we have the choice not to?

I'm with you Tim. We need to deal with the root of the problems, not create convoluted 'solutions'.

Why wait around for someone to invent carbon capture & storage - despite years of promises and assurances from the coal industry, there is not a single lightbulb anywhere in the world powered by a CCS coal plant.
We already have commercially available solutions like baseload solar thermal with molten salt storage, providing zero-emissions power day & night. Google 'Andasol', 'SolarReserve', 'Torresol' to start off with.

Carbon capture and storage is a stalling mechanism by the coal industry to continue with "business as usual". The cost to capture the carbon is the first hurdle followed by the problem of locating safe storage sites for the amount of carbon currently being produced in our coal fired power stations.

Proven successful carbon capture and storage has been around for many millions of years - it is called photosynthesis. Each year biological processes cycle 8% of total atmospheric CO2.

There are 2 critical aspects to addressing climate change - reducing future emissions is up to technology - while restoring the balance with current excess CO2 levels is totally dependant on biology.

Imagine if we had a process to remove billions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere safely, quickly and cost-effectively - while at the same time building soil, reversing desertification, re-watering eco-systems, boosting biodiversity, enhancing global food security and improving the lives of hundreds of millions of people in rural and regional areas around our planet?

We do - it's called changed grazing management and soil carbon.

Please take a look at the presentations on http://www.soilcarbon.com.au/ to learn more.

I think you've asked the wrong question. Although Australia has the highest per capita emissions in the world, mainly thanks to coal, in the grand scheme of things it does not really matter how Australia decides to reduce its emissions - it just matters that it does. However, the issue in Asia is quite different.

The vast majority of the growth in CO2 emissions from the power sector in the next two decades will be from new coal fired plant being constructed in China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam and other Asian countries. We cannot stop these countries from developing, nor should we expect to. Some of them - India and Indonesia, for example - still have 40% of their populations that have no access to electricity at all. Others need to increase their electricity production to support economic development that will pull their populations out of poverty.

Coal is the most wide spread electricity source available in Asia, and the cheapest from which to produce electricity. It therefore meets the social goal of enabling energy security for countries, and the economic goal of producing electricity at least cost. But it fails the environmental test miserably, because of the CO2 emissions it produces. Looked at dispassionately - and not as an argument about which technology is most favoured - would it not make sense to develop a means of dealing with the emissions from coal, since its social and economic characteristics mean that it will continue to provide the backbone for development in Asian economies?

I agree that biosequestration has a large role to play in absorbing carbon dioxide emissions. However, anyone who has looked at this equation - including the IEA and other expert bodies - realises that the chances of absorbing the amount of extra carbon dioxide that will be produced in Asia over the next two decades through purely terrestial means are very low. A more direct means of dealing with these emissions is critical.

So whether we like the idea of coal and CCS or not, the reality is that it needs to work - coal is not going away, there is no plan B for Asia.

If you combine Carbon Capture with a biofuel (eg. biogas) you can create a carbon negative industrial process. But it would be expensive.

However, I don't really see any reasonable means of sequestering carbon beyond biochar and or soil carbon as mentioned above. The best way is not to put fossil carbon into the atmosphere to begin with.

If we did we'd be squandering a significant (and potentially redundant) investment that supports an industry that should be in decline.

We may as well build a few more cobblestone roads for horses and carts...

Carbon sequestration by any means will only have a future in this country if it is made financially worthwhile doing so. We cannot expect farmers or forresters to subsidise the exercise, especially while developing countries are continuing to increase the coal-fired power stations that will produce more than we can sequester anway. If a price is put on carbon that makes sequestration a commercial viability then it will happen. If not, the government can regulate as much as you want, it won't happen in any meaningful way. The danger is that a federal government makes a political crusade out of it (like CPRS) which will mean that 50% of people won't support it just out of spite. It will need to be a genuine bipartisan position, not a political one.

The global CCS lobby group - which so far has been funded only by Australia, except for a generous $10 guarantee from the US - says that CCS wont be commercially ready on a large scale for decades. If they don't believe in its ability to halt the climate crisis, then how can we cling to the mantra that "it just has to work"?

I argree With everyone