Environment Victoria said the new coal projects, claimed to produce cleaner brown coal products such as fertilisers, lacked proper environmental assessment or in-depth understanding of the life cycle of emissions.

The environmental body spoke out following a $50 million state and federal government grant to technology developers Coal Energy Australia and Ignite Energy Resources, announced on Friday.

Environment Victoria acting chief executive Mark Wakeham told the Latrobe Valley Express there was no rigorous assessment of the lifecycle of emissions of producing liquid fuels, fertilisers, steel inputs or any other by-products.

Wakeham said the projects put faith in government that such alternatives would lower emissions with no evidence to support the claims.

“New brown coal technology is less about securing our own electricity supply and more about speculative export pipe dreams” he said.

"This is no time to be pushing new projects which could lead to a coal allocation and new mines."