April 17, 2012. An Australian firm has frozen development of a controversial A$1.2 billion ($1.23 billion) brown coal-gas hybrid power plant after a ruling by a tribunal effectively delayed construction, putting the future of the project in doubt. Energy technology firm HRL, one of a number of companies trying to develop clean-coal power plants, said it had frozen design and pre-construction work on a proposed 600-megawatt plant in the southern state of Victoria.