The proposed HRL “clean coal” power plant in Victoria's Latrobe Valley is facing increasingly long odds of being developed after Australia's four largest banks and several foreign financial institutions have suggested they will not help finance the development, according to a report by the Australian Financial Review.
Australia's four major banks had already indicated they would not be backing the project, but foreign banks were thought to be interested.
That outlook has changed, however, with a number of international banks, including Unicredit, BNP Paribas, HSBC and Rabobank indicating they will not be involved with the project because they see it as likely to violate their internal investment policies on energy, according to the AFR.
HSBC's energy policy says it can only invest in power stations that have a carbon intensity of 550 grams of carbon emissions per kilowatt hour of generation.
HRL's plans to dry brown coal before burning it would still see the plant generate some 800 grams of emissions per kilowatt hour of generation, the newspaper reported.