Australia's green bank has received a bid for funding a coal-fired power station but it seems unlikely to attract taxpayer money.
The application to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation came from someone looking to build a new 900-megawatt coal-fired power station worth about $1.2 billion, a Senate committee was told on Monday.
"It is for a new build and it's purporting to do carbon capture and storage at the same time," CEFC boss Oliver Yates told the estimates hearing about the bid that only arrived on Friday.
But he didn't think new coal-fired power plants in general could attract financing without the government indemnifying them against the risk of a future carbon price.
With the cost of carbon emissions included - which Mr Yates thought was likely to happen at some point - the price of generating coal-fired power would rise significantly.
"Carbon is likely to be one way or the other a cost," he said.
"We're lending the taxpayers' money; I want to recover that money, therefore to be able to recover that money I would need to think that the project is going to be viable."
Mr Yates would also want any coal-fired power station to have indemnification, again probably from the government, against building delays.
"The construction of such a project would be highly contentious within the community and as such it may be subject to disruption by disgruntled participants," he said.
Its viability would also be at risk as renewable energy becomes more competitive in price.
"No bank that I am aware of would be very interested in lending to an organisation which was going to be unviable in the future," Mr Yates said.
To date, the CEFC has never provided funding for coal power stations.
As well, the legislation governing it explicitly bans it from financing carbon capture and storage projects, although the government is exploring lifting that prohibition.
