Clean coal may be a marketing term that you can still read in the Murdoch press and hear on the ABC, but the technology remains nothing more than a fantasy – and a point of distraction and a lacquered prop for the fossil fuel industry and its proponents.

The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) has published a damning assessment of Australia’s carbon capture and storage program, noting that more than $450 million has been invested by the government over the past decade, and nothing achieved.

Not a single tonne of CO2 has been saved, no technology is ready for deployment, and the ANAO report slams the government for having no strategic direction, no oversight over the projects, and little accounting for the spending.

Australia’s CCS programs were launched by former prime minister Kevin Rudd in 2007 and 2009 as part of his climate package, and the vision then – despite enormous skepticism that the technology was a crock – was to have 20 plants up and running by 2020, so Australia could “lead the world”.

The technology was championed by Labor energy minister Martin Ferguson and the Coalition’s Ian Macfarlane. Ferguson warned the “lights would go out” without it. Both Ferguson and Macfarlane now work for major fossil fuel lobby groups and are still campaigning relentlessly against renewables.

The ANAO report focuses on two of the federal government’s “clean coal” initiatives – the Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Flagships program, and the National Low Emissions Coal Initiative (NLECI).

“Key performance measures for the programs provide limited insight into the extent to which the programs are achieving the … strategic objective of accelerating the deployment of technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” ANAO notes.

Indeed, at one point, the only performance measure monitored by the department of science and industry was the number of programs, not what the programs were actually doing or, as it turns out, not doing.

The NLECI was assigned $500 million and given the task of demonstrating “clean coal” technologies, including CCS, by 2015, and making them available for commercial deployment by 2020.

It spent $233 million, but nothing happened, and it was a farce from the get-go. ANAO notes it had no program guidelines or risk management plans in place.

Three of the five initiatives didn’t happen because of technology and cost issues; there was no clear rationale in selection of replacement projects and there is no detailed assessment of what, if anything has been achieved.

The CCS Flagships program fared little better. The government originally proclaimed it would result in “at least 20 large-scale, integrated CCS demonstration projects” being launched globally by 2010, for broad deployment of CCS by 2020.

It was initially promised $2 billion, but this was gradually wound back, presumably as successive governments recognised what a complete boondoggle the technology was. CCS Flagships ended up spending $217 million and another $42 million is committed. According to ANAO “none of the CCS Flagships projects met the original timeframe or reached the stage of deployable technology as originally envisaged in the program design.

“It is therefore unclear whether the program is capable of delivering on its strategic policy objective as the program is due to close in 2020 and all funding is currently committed.”

Nearly every paragraph of the report is a damning assessment of what is clearly government and bureaucratic incompetence.

Some examples: