Subject:Hazelwood emission control a joke From:Michael Gunter Date:Thu, 26 Oct 2006 14:04:34 +1000 To:letters@theage.com.au Dear Sir/Madam, It is a complete nonsense for the Howard and Bracks governments to be throwing any public money at the British-based owners of the Hazelwood Power station. Our home, planet earth does not care one iota how efficiently or cleanly we produce electricity from coal. What matters to the global climate is the total carbon dioxide emissions we release into the atmosphere. This is the trigger to which it is responding with increasing temperatures. The Victorian government recently licenced Hazelwood to go on digging and burning coal until such time as 445 million tonnes of carbon dioxide has been released. Nobody is talking in the media about this contractual figure being adjusted downwards in compensation for public funding of cleaner generation, so we should all assume that Hazelwood will still be permitted to continue full-bore power generation until the until the contracted 445 million tonnes of greenhouse gases are released. By my reckoning this means that the public is getting absolutely nothing in return for our cash handout to Hazelwood. It is clearly time that Australian green organizations started directly lobbying the UK government to put some serious curbs on their capital flows being invested abroad to pollute on such a massive scale with outdated technology. Yours sincerely Michael Gunter (formerly owner/operator of the Breamlea Wind Genearator) 37 Haines Street North Melbourne 3051 mobile phone 0423 970 195 reference for 445 million tonnes contract: http://www.investis.com/ip/reports/ar2005/content/csr.html