Australia will provide up to 100 million Australian dollars (US$81 million) per year for a new international institute that will develop technologies to capture and store greenhouse gases, AP quoted Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as saying Friday. Rudd said he would explain the proposed institute in a presentation to the United Nations General Assembly in New York next week. The Australian-based institute would serve as a hub for development of carbon capture and storage technologies, which allow power plants to catch emissions and inject them into underground storage spaces. There have been small-scale trials of such technologies, but no industrial-scale carbon capture and storage power stations have been built. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide have been blamed for global warming. The institute would also help the Group of Eight industrialized nations _ the United States, Russia, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Britain _ fulfill their commitment to have 20 carbon-sequestering plants operating by 2020, Rudd said. «We the government want this global carbon and storage institute in Australia to be the global go-to place across the board for clean coal technologies and their application. That is the ambition,» Rudd told reporters in Canberra. «Rather than simply put an idea out there, we have decided that we need to have some skin in the game. So we will be providing up to A$100 million a year to fund this global carbon capture and storage institute.» Australia is one of the world's worst carbon dioxide polluters per capita because of its heavy reliance on its abundant coal reserves. As the driest continent after Antarctica, it is also considered one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change. Rudd said carbon capture and storage have the potential to trap 9.9 billion short tons (9 billion metric tons) of carbon by 2050. That represents about 20 percent of the total reduction needed to cap atmospheric levels at 450 parts per million. Some scientists have warned that allowing carbon dioxide concentrations to surpass that level would make dangerous climate change more likely, particularly the melting of the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets. The government hopes to have the institute running by January, Rudd said. Its location hasn't been decided yet, he said. Australia's Worldwide Fund for Nature praised Rudd's announcement. «This is a genuine opportunity for Australia to become a world leader in the battle against climate change,» WWF Australia chief executive Greg Bourne said in a statement.
