U.S. – Australia Relations
Asia-Pacific Partnership Committed to Climate Change
Canberra — 1 November 2006
Media Release
01 November 2006
I am pleased to release today the Action Plans from the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate and to announce the Australian Government's allocation of $60 million for 42 collaborative projects.
The projects cover a range of areas including renewable energies, improving environmental performance of fossil fuels, energy efficiency and best environmental practice in sectors such as coal mining and aluminium production.
The inaugural meeting of the Partnership, which involves Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and the United States was held in Sydney in January this year. Since then the governments, industry and research organisations from the Partnership have worked collaboratively to develop Action Plans and projects.
Eight Task Forces covering cleaner fossil fuels, renewable and distributed energy, power generation and transmission, aluminium, buildings and appliances, cement, coal and steel have worked together to develop climate change strategies for their sectors in a very short time frame.
Examples of projects that will receive Australian Government funding include:
- $8 million to carry out testing of the CSIRO's mobile Post Combustion Capture plant under various conditions to develop the technology for commercial application;
- $5 million under the Renewable Generation and Distributed Energy Task Force to support the pilot of solar concentrator photovoltaic technology and facilitate planning and approval processes for deployment of the power stations across Partnership countries, in particular China and the United States;
- $1 million for High Silica Bauxite processing under the Aluminium Task Force;
- $2 million to support an Integrated Coal Production and Methane Extraction project;
- $1.15 million to establish a Cement Centre of Excellence; and
- $2 million to align national stand-by power approaches across participating countries.
The Asia-Pacific Partnership includes countries that represent about half of the world's emissions, energy use, GDP and population, and is an important initiative that engages, for the first time, the key greenhouse-gas emitting countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
The Partnership is committed to addressing the challenges of climate change, energy security and air pollution in a way that encourages economic development and reduces poverty.
The Australian Government has committed $100 million to the Partnership with 25 per cent of the funding allocated to renewable projects. Nearly $18 million of the $60 million announced today is for renewable projects. The Partnership will continue to develop new projects that are a practical demonstration of our commitment to tackling climate change.
I congratulate fellow Partnership member countries, business and research organisations for their dedication and commitment to demonstrate and deploy practical activities to address climate change.
A complete list of projects funded by the Australian Government is attached.
A booklet summarising the Partnership Action Plans and the projects is available online at www.asiapacificpartnership.org or http://www.dfat.gov.au/environment/climate/ap6.
Original document from www.pm.gov.au.
Last update Monday, 19 November 2007
