**Check against delivery
Welcome to Canberra, on what may be, for many of you, the first of many trips to Australia's capital.
Ladies and gentlemen
Let me first say thank you all for attending this inaugural gathering of the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute.
This is an initiative that has come together very quickly and I must say it is a great credit to my Department and to all of you that we have achieved such enormous support from not only governments, but the business community, around the world.
Our economies are all faced with the challenge of adapting to a carbon-constrained world.
These challenges will be best met if we face them together and work collaboratively to develop and deploy the cleaner energy technologies needed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from energy production.
The International Energy Agency forecasts that world energy demand will increase by 45 per cent between 2006 and 2030.
Despite the rising importance of renewable energy, fossil fuel use, especially coal, will continue to grow throughout this period.
Therefore, carbon capture and storage technologies are vital if we are to meet our various targets to dramatically reduce CO2 emissions by 2050.
Coal is critical to Australia - and the world's - power supply.
It is our least expensive source of large-scale electricity and continuing access to coal-fired power generation is vital to the health of all of our economies.
This is particularly so to provide developing nations with access to affordable energy, thereby enabling them to pursue a modernisation agenda and lift their people out of poverty.
But the long-term viability of coal depends on our ability to burn it more efficiently and cleanly, and capture CO2 emissions for storage.
The importance of our success in CCS technology development and deployment is well-understood by the global community.
The G8 group of leading economies last year stated that we must commit to at least 20 fully integrated, industrial-scale projects by 2010 in order to achieve the broad deployment of CCS by 2020.
This is the primary purpose of the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute - to advance that goal.
But for the Institute to be successful, we must first establish the institutional, governance and business arrangements that will provide a framework for its operation.
That is your job over the next two days and I am sure you will build a solid foundation for the future of the Institute.
It is vital that we build partnerships to further CCS and Institute-supported projects and establish processes to share knowledge and promote technology adoption.
I wish you every success in this endeavour.
In closing, as a long-time visitor to Canberra - and putting on my other hat as Minister for Tourism - I urge you to visit some of this city's great cultural institutions such as our National Museum, the National Art Gallery, the National Library, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Australian War Memorial.