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Greens slam $100m to polluters - as pollution-free alternatives are starved

Greens leader Bob Brown says the Howard government's decision to give $100 million to help build a polluting brown coal power station in Victoria is a huge mistake.

"It's like putting $100 million into developing low-tar cigarettes. The end result will be burning brown coal with greenhouse gas pollution levels reduced to those of current black coal pollution," Senator Brown said.

"It is not clean coal. It is $100 million that should have gone to backing non-polluting alternatives like the 300 megawatt solar-thermal power station at Moree or the sliver cell solar technology which Origin Energy and the Australian National University have ready to go.

"Just yesterday I had another frustrated businessman tell me how his proposed zero-pollution wind farm for Port Augusta was stymied because the Howard government's mandatory renewable energy target had lapsed.

"By simply introducing a price on carbon and mandating a renewable energy target of 15% by 2012 a host of non-polluting solar, solar thermal, wind and geothermal options would be underway and attracting huge private investment.

"The billions-of-dollars profit coal industry, which has already siphoned off $300 million of taxpayers' money for so-called 'clean coal' experiments should pay for its own research," Senator Brown said.