Energy company AGL and French industrial gas company Air Liquide today announced that they will build a plant at the Torrens Island power station to capture up to 50,000 tonnes a year of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions for commercial use.

The project will be the first in Australia to capture CO₂ from flue gases from a power station and brings state-of-the-art technology to the state.

“This is technology the likes of which has not been seen before in Australia,” the Premier Jay Weatherill said during a ceremony on Torrens Island, which hosts the largest gas-fired power station in Australia.

While there are a number of research projects on carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a means of addressing the problem of climate change caused by CO₂ emissions, the AGL-Air Liquide project will be the first to make use of the captured gas.

You might like

Archive

The one-legged guide to ageing well

Archive

Reserve Bank tipped to hold interest rates despite inflation fall

In doing so, the Torrens Island project could change the economics of capturing CO₂ with the cost of CCS projects seen by industry observers as one of the major constraints on the potential of CCS.

The CO₂ captured from the emissions stream at Torren Island will be purified and be “reused by industry to carbonate drinks and to treat waste water and public swimming pools”.

“A multi-million dollar recovery plant of the scale builds on the substantial investment that has already been made in a low carbon future for this state,” Weatherill said.

“As a result of low carbon investment, South Australia has the lowest greenhouse gas factor for electricity out of all mainland Australian states,” he said.

“The Government congratulates AGL on taking these steps to reduce its carbon emissions.”

AGL estimates the extraction from its emissions is equivalent to removing about 16,000 vehicles from the road every year.

Construction of the CO₂ plant will commence shortly and is expected to be operational by the second half of 2016.