Coal

Victoria offers investors the opportunity to develop brown coal projects from one of the world’s largest, high quality coal resources, located close to potential carbon storage sites and supported by world-class research.

With an abundance of brown coal occurring in thick seams close to the earth’s surface, Victoria is home to one of the largest and lowest cost energy sources in the world. More recently, rising global energy prices and clean coal technology developments have created new, non-power related investment opportunities for the Victorian brown coal industry.

Victoria’s brown coal is typically low in ash, sulphur, heavy metals and nitrogen, making it very low in impurities by world standards. However, the high moisture content of brown coal - which ranges from 48-70 per cent, reduces its net energy value (average 8.6 MJ/kg on a net wet basis or 26.6 MJ/kg on a gross dry basis).

The 430 billion tonnes of in-situ brown coal located in Victoria make up a large proportion of the worlds brown coal. More than 80 per cent of this resource is located in the Gippsland Basin (South East Victoria), with seams in the Latrobe Valley containing an estimated 65 billion tonnes of measured resource. Approximately half of this has been identified as ‘potentially economic’, 13 billion tonnes of which are yet to be allocated by the Victorian Government.

The Fact Sheet Victoria, Australia, A principal Brown Coal Province (PDF 418kb) outlines further general coal information.

To view the PDF document you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader. A free copy can be downloaded from the Adobe Acrobat (external link).