Emergency protest: Gillard government to sign brown coal export deal

2.45pm TODAY (Friday June 25) Langham Hotel, Southgate Avenue, Southbank. Melbourne

Simon Crean is due to sign a deal, in Melbourne today, to export Victorian brown coal to Vietnam. (ABC story below)

With less than 24 hours in the job, this is Prime Minister Julia Gillard's first big climate test. Unless she pulls this deal her climate credentials will be shattered.

Last year, similar proposals were canned by the Victorian State Government after widespread protest by the climate movement.

So far we have managed to keep export coal - which causes more carbon pollution then the rest of Australia's greenhouse emmissions - out of Victoria. It is vital we stop this.

Please come and express your opposition to this dirty deal.

For more information: info@climateactioncentre.org or 0419 253 342

Damien Lawson
Climate Action Centre
http://www.climateactioncentre.org

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/06/25/2936680.htm?site=gippsland...

ABC Online: A Victorian company will sign a deal to export brown coal from the Latrobe Valley to Vietnam.

The $400 million deal will see technology created by Environmental Clean Technologies (ECT) used to generate an exportable form of brown coal.

The company says its technology removes moisture from the coal to produce the equivalent of a black coal pellet.

As part of the deal, the company will build a production facility at Loy Yang Power station by 2014.

Ashley Moore from ECT say the project will have long-term ramifications.

"Yes we do expect it to be the first of many deals globally," he said.

Initially, the company will export 2 million tonnes of coal to Vietnam a year, eventually rising to 20 million tonnes.

Mr Moore says the project will boost jobs in the Gippsland area.

"Victoria is blessed with one of the largest reserves of lignite in the world," he said.

Construction of this facility in the Latrobe Valley will generate several hundred of construction jobs during phase one and growing to over a hundred jobs during the project's life."

The Trade Minister, Simon Crean will formalise the agreement with a Vietnamese trade delegation in Melbourne this afternoon.