Opportunities for Collaboration and Information Exchange in Black and Brown Coal Research and Development

The coal production and power generation industries in Australia face a number of common challenges including conducting business in a carbon-constrained environment; controlling/reducing costs while operating in highly competitive markets; and ageing workforces, particularly in the power generation sector. Enhanced collaboration between black and brown coal production and power generation sectors as well as between industry and Governments therefore is desirable to maximise returns on RD&D investments focused on overcoming these challenges.  This project was undertaken during a time of significant uncertainty for the black and brown coal production and power generation sectors, as well as significant opportunity. The uncertainty relates primarily to how these sectors will be affected by implementation of an emissions trading scheme in Australia, while the opportunity relates primarily to these sectors capitalising on Australian and State Government current - and likely future - commitments to invest in clean coal innovation to ensure Australia and particular States are able to continue to benefit from their indigenous and very large coal resources.

The Australian Government is establishing the National Low Emissions Coal Council (NLECC) to drive its National Low Emissions Coal Initiative (NLECI). The black coal production industry is organised and well-positioned via the commitments of the Australian Coal Association members and the Queensland and New South Wales State Governments to contribute to and benefit from the NLECI and its innovation (including R&D) investment funds.

The power generation sector is much less organised and positioned to contribute to and benefit from the NLECI - a concern that arose a number of times in discussions with stakeholders of representation of this sector on the NLECC. It is clear that the generation sector (which includes the brown coal sector) needs to resolve this issue as well as distilling its innovation needs to enable them to be fed into the NLECI strategy determination process.

A component of this project was to compile a listing of available publications from each of the research funding agencies or providers that historically and currently support black and brown coal R&D. This compilation is included as part of this download as a searchable Microsoft Access database.

Discussions with stakeholders elicited useful insights into issues and possible pathways ahead also form part of this final report.

For Australian Coal Producers - to access black or brown coal R&D reports:

Black coal producers (contributors to ACARP) can freely download all ACARP project results via their own web site - www.acarp.com.au, and can access brown coal results by contacting HRL on the email below.   

Brown coal producers wishing to access ACARP's results should do so by contacting HRL in the first instance.

Marilyn Hogben, Information Services Manager, HRL Technologies Pty Ltd by email at mhogben@hrl.com.au

Access to reports may incur a small handling charge.