THE Federal Government's draft legislation for a world-first regulated carbon capture and storage (CCS) system has failed to pass muster with the very groups it is meant to help, including backers of the $5 billion Monash Energy coal-to-liquids project in the Latrobe Valley. Complaints with the draft legislation raise doubts about the Government's plan to make CCS integral to Australia's move to an emissions trading system under a policy paper to be released today by Climate Change Minister Penny Wong.

Even in the most alternative-friendly future imaginable, coal is unlikely to go away. It is cheap, abundant and often local. So what can be done to make coal

Wallace S. Broecker One of the world's leading climate scientists challenges Greenpeace's opposition to storing CO2in the depth of the oceans. Most of us who are concerned about global warming agree that an important part of any strategy designed to stem the ongoing build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will be to capture and store CO2. Potential storage sites include spent oil fields, saline aquifers, layered basalts and the deep ocean. "Point pollution'

Finding ways of safely burying carbon dioxide could be the only way of keeping greenhouse gas emissions below dangerous levels, the International Energy Agency's chief economist said on Thursday. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is seen by industry and some lawmakers as a possible silver bullet in the fight against climate change as it could curb growing emissions from coal plants.

Leading Hong Kong clothing manufacturers are coming together to reduce the environmental impact of their factories in response to growing pressure from international retailers. The group, the Sustainable Fashion Business Consortium, is being launched today, World Earth Day. Many Chinese suppliers are being told to clean up operations from their US and European customers. Leading the charge is Wal-Mart. The world's biggest retailer will in October convene a meeting of 1,000 of its suppliers to set goals for reducing their impact on the environment.

THE idea that coal-fired electricity generation can continue to be the major contributor to global electricity generation and the world can still restrict carbon dioxide emissions to a level constant with holding climate warming below 2 degrees is a fairytale, according to letter in the premier science journal Nature (published online, May 7, 2008).

NOW that the first Rudd-Swan budget is behind us, the real test of the new Labor Government's economic management credentials emerges - climate change. Budgets are annual set-piece events. In contrast, trying to layer an emissions trading scheme on an extraction economy like Australia's, as Woodside's chief executive Don Voelte says, has never been tried before.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emanates from the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants and other generators and is a greenhouse gas. Existing CO2 capture techniques involve the use of solid materials that lack sufficient stability for repeated use