The government announced yesterday that it is providing another $40 million for the nation’s first carbon capture project, which is capturing emissions from the Yallorn coal-fired power station in Victoria and convert the gas into cement and other building materials.

The federal government and Victoria are already providing $3.5 million each for the project – a matching amount to what Calera Corp., a California-based company, is sinking in the project.

Calera is due to start construction this year. After the demonstration phase, it plans to capture more than 300,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide and convert it into more than 1 million tonnes of building material a year. The project can expand to 200-megawatt scale after the demonstration period.

The project “will allow us to test the world’s first carbonation process on brown coal to produce useful building materials and reduce CO2 emissions from an existing coal-fired power station at the same time,” Minister for Resources and Energy Martin Ferguson said in a statement.