Australian Greens climate change spokesperson, Senator Christine Milne, today welcomed Greenpeace International's comprehensive report into carbon capture and storage, and said that the report confirms our view that we must act now to reduce emissions fast with the renewable energy and efficiency technologies which do exist.

Senator Milne said "We cannot further delay action on climate change, or continue to divert valuable budget dollars, because a hypothetical alternative future solution might allow us to keep using coal.

"The urgency of climate change is such that we must act now to reduce emissions fast, using the technologies that are ready and available now, such as energy efficiency, solar thermal, wind and many others.

"Prime Minister Rudd must now jettison any plans to spend public dollars on coal company research which is increasingly exposed as a sham. The coal companies can spend their own money on whatever they like, but leaders on climate change should focus on reducing emissions now.

"Today's report from Greenpeace sets out clearly and with detailed references all the key problems with carbon capture and storage from coal, showing that it is far from the reality that its advocates claim, that there are very real risks of leakage, particularly given the scale of storage that would be needed, and that it would negate the cost advantage that coal currently claims.

"The analysis presented in this report is far from unique and cannot be taken as simply the view of environmentalists. More and more industry representatives are expressing concern that carbon capture and storage technologies are not living up to the hopes of recent years, and the techno-fix for coal is slipping further into the future and higher up the cost ladder.

"The pipe-dream of 'clean coal' is already being outcompeted by renewables around the world, even though the playing field is skewed heavily in its favour through subsidies and the benefits of existing coal infrastructure. Despite years of effort, progress is simply not being made in demonstrating that it is viable, let alone competitive.

"If we made the decision now to prioritise cutting emissions and invested in the technologies which can do so now, renewables and efficiency would do the job and coal with carbon capture would be obsolete before it was even ready to come online."

The Greenpeace report, false Hope: Why carbon capture and storage won't save the climate, is available for download at www.greenpeace.org/ccs