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Welcome to CoalWatch
CoalWatch is an interactive resource that tracks the coal industry’s expansion plans and helps builds a movement to stop these polluting developments.
Victoria can’t take action on climate change and expand its brown coal industry at the same time. The two are incompatible. To reduce our emissions and tackle climate change we need to be moving away from brown coal, not building new polluting projects.
It’s well known that Victoria’s energy portfolio is poorly balanced. In 2009, 92 percent of the state’s electricity came from burning brown coal. What’s less well known though is that the coal industry has huge expansion plans. Our state government has issued the coal industry with exploration and mining licences for huge swathes of our land across the state. If just a fraction of the proposed projects go ahead Victoria’s greenhouse emissions would increase massively, as would the industry’s water use and its impact on our local environments.
It’s time to draw a line in the sand. We need a moratorium on new coal projects, and on the expansion of existing coal projects for Victoria. And we need a plan to clean up the state’s electricity supply by shifting towards clean, renewable energy.
The first step is to know what’s on the drawing board. That’s where CoalWatch comes in.
CoalWatch provides a way for everyday Victorians to keep track of the coal industry’s ambitious expansion plans. To check what tax-payer money has been pledged to brown coal projects and the coal projects industry is spruiking to our politicians.
Victorian governments have so far given the coal industry the green light. Now it’s up to all of us to put up the stop sign. Help us make sure Victoria’s brown coal stays in the ground.
Why CoalWatch
Doubts emerge over Latrobe Valley transition
16 May 2013
ABC
Renewable energy projects lose in budget
15 May 2013
ABC PM
Unknown wonders: Barmah-Millewa forest
14 May 2013
Susan Lawler, The Conversation
Carbon price working? Coal slumps, clean energy soars
10 May 2013
Tom Arup, Sydney Morning Herald
Liberal MPs want rethink on Coalition's climate change plan
10 May 2013
Jonathan Swan, Sydney Morning Herald
Open cut in spotlight
9 May 2013
Latrobe Valley Express
Brown coal investment
9 May 2013
Latrobe Valley Express
Scrap subsidies and save the budget?
9 May 2013
Nick Perry, The Australian
Transport a winner, but others are not so happy
8 May 2013
ABC
Wind farm syndrome dismissed
7 May 2013
Tom Arup, The Age
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Flickr
- Improving the Renewable Energy Target |
- Plan B: An Agenda For Immediate Climate Action |
- Powering a desalination plant: clean energy or more coal? |
- Near Zero Emissions from Latrobe Valley Brown Coal, Final Report |
- The case against a further coal allocation |
- The Quick Guide to our Community Climate Action Plan |
- Victoria’s Energy Mix 2000 ‐ 2009 |
- Carbon capture and storage: white knight or white elephant? |
- Australia’s Electricity Generation Mix 1960-2009 |
- 2011 Annual Report |




