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There’s no plane we can’t learn how to fly in the Valley.The Latrobe Regional Airport will become the first location in Australia to house an electric aircraft centre. STORY - PAGE 49
Photograph: Zaida Glibanovic
Coal cancellation A DRIVE to establish new industry and jobs using Latrobe Valley’s brown coal in non-energy ways is effectively dead, after the state government stopped funding research into the work, a decision denounced as “folly” and “ideological madness” by local leaders. Australian Carbon Innovation (ACI) at Federation University, which since 2011 has been researching the non-energy use of brown coal that does not produce greenhouse gas emissions, will close on June 30 after the government pulled the plug on funding. Brown coal, which is two-thirds water, produces carbon dioxide when burnt in power stations. The chief executive of ACI, Brian Davey, described the action as “folly of the highest degree”, while Federal Member for Gippsland, Darren Chester, said it was a direct result of neglect by the state government, which had given
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the difficult decision to cease operations, effective on June 30, after careful consideration of all the options. It had become increasing difficulty in attracting support to develop low emission, high-value products from Victoria’s largest single resource - lignite. “Despite the company’s efforts to provide options to move away from high emission power production but retain high-paying and valuable jobs in the Gippsland region, the challenges posed by a difficult investment environment exacerbated by government neglect have led to this difficult decision,” ACI said. Mr Davey said along with the rest of the world, Victoria was undergoing a revolution in energy supply and manufacturing processes to meet the challenge of reducing atmospheric emissions. “From its inception, ACI accepted the IPCC assessment of climate change science and the urgent need to cease the burning of fossil fuels for energy
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up on securing new jobs in the Latrobe Valley from the brown coal asset. “Sadly, this is yet another example of the ideological madness from the extreme Green movement which has captured the modern Labor Party, particularly in Victoria. Funding research and helping to develop alternative uses for the incredible natural resource we have in our region used to be an issue of bipartisan support, but the Labor Party has abandoned all logic,” he said. “We don’t have to burn the brown coal for it to be a valuable source of 21st century jobs, and other countries are already developing alternative uses, but the Labor Party refuses to recognise the opportunities in the Latrobe Valley. “The Prime Minister claims he wants to support modern manufacturing and industry in Australia, but his mates in Melbourne are cutting funding for the Australian Carbon Innovation and its important research.” In a statement, ACI said it had made
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and other industrial processes where that required release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. However, carbon is essential to all life on earth and fundamental to most industrial processes, including production of all the renewable and energy efficiency technologies,” he said. “The application of the philosophy to ‘decarbonize’ across the board is therefore misleading. To date, all that has changed is that Australia has exported its jobs, manufacturing industry and wealth offshore, resulting in continuing growth of global atmospheric emissions generated by countries which produce the goods we continue to import. “For the Victorian government to abandon a key resource that will assist in that transition appears to be a folly of the highest degree. Victoria has wasted the opportunity to build a low emission economy based on a vast carbon resource in Gippsland.” Continued - Page 2
MOE DANCE EISTEDDFOD - PAGE 38
WHITE IN THE THICK OF IT VALLEY SPORT