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Low Emissions Coal Technologies

The brown coal resources in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley are amongst the largest in the world, representing 20 per cent of the world’s reserves. The total brown coal estimated to be in Victoria is approximately 430 billion tonnes, with an estimated useable brown coal reserve of 50,000 million tonnes. Most of Victoria’s brown coal is located in the Latrobe Valley, 150km Southeast of Melbourne.

Brown coal has been used by Victoria's electricity generation industry since the 1920s, and is currently used to produce around 85% of the electricity used by Victoria each year. The low-cost electricity produced using brown coal is a major component of the competitive advantage that has seen Victoria established as Australia’s leading manufacturing state. It is, however, also a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. To ensure supply security, continued competitiveness of Victorian industry, employment growth and greenhouse abatement, Victoria’s next major tranche of base load needs to be generated from plants that guarantee lower emissions from new generation.

Since 2005, the Victorian Government has committed more than $230 million to drive advances in pre-commercial brown coal technologies related to carbon capture, combustion, gasification, dewatering and storage as part of its Energy Technology Innovation Strategy (ETIS).


This strategy is designed to accelerate these technologies to the commercially ready stage so that brown coal can continue to be part of Victoria’s generation system in a low emissions future.

Current brown coal related projects

Victorian Government support for brown coal projects includes:

  • $110 million allocated to the Carbon Capture and Storage Large Scale Demonstration Program (CCS LSDP) to allow Victoria access to the most relevant and applicable pre-commercial technologies. For further information visit the Large Scale Demonstration Programs page.
  • $16 million over 4 years to establish and operate Brown Coal Innovation Australia (BCIA), an independent not-for-profit company to coordinate brown coal research and development (R&D) across Australia. For further information visit the Brown Coal Research and Development page.
  • $750,000 each over 3 years from the Victorin Government and KEPCo to pursue strategic research in high level utilisation technologies for Victorian brown coal in collaboration with KEPCo.
  • $2 million provided by Regional Development Victoria to Nippon Steel Engineering to investigate the feasibility of coal to synthetic gas technology. For further information visit the Large Scale Demonstration Programs page.
  • $4 million to the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC) to a trial of carbon dioxide storage in the Otway Basin. For further information visit the Otways Carbon Dioxide Storage Trials (Geosequestration) page.
  • $12 million for Brown Coal Research and Development Grants covering a broad range of research topics including carbon capture, combustion, gasification and dewatering. For further information visit the Brown Coal Research and Development page.
  • $83.5 million for the development of large pre-commercial demonstration plants trialling new clean brown coal technology in the Latrobe Valley. For further information visit the Large Scale Demonstration Programs page.

Further information