The first report since the Safeguard Mechanism demonstrates the fundamental flaws in a system that may reduce emissions overall, but is certain to increase the profits of some emitters. Kim Wingerei reports.

The Clean Energy Regulator’s report on Australia’s biggest polluters covers the 2023-24 financial year, and shows that emissions had dropped by approx. 2% from the previous year, and were 0.6% better than the baseline (as explained below). According to climate change economist David McEwen, the total profit to those who reduced their emissions was $280m based on the $33 per tonne current trading price of Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs).

The Safeguard Mechanism (SGM) covers 217 industrial facilities whose carbon emissions exceed 100,000 tonnes annually. Each facility must reduce its emissions every year until 2030, from a baseline which is lowered by 4.9% every year, except for the so-called “trade-exposed facilities” such as steelworks, aluminium smelters and paper mills, their baseline lowered by 1%.

Facilities that reduce their emissions by more than the baseline accumulate Safeguard Mechanism Credits (SMCs), which can either be banked to offset future failures to meet the baseline target or sold to other emitters who may need them to offset their own emission reduction failures.

It’s a mechanism similar to how ACCUs work (or don’t), and akin to the principles of the Catholic Church confessional to save the souls of sinners.

At first blush, the scheme appears to have delivered genuine emissions reduction and overachievement against the new baselines.

However, McEwen says, “One year is little time to implement genuine emissions reductions, and most changes in reported gross emissions (before carbon credit adjustments) likely relate to production variations or reporting inconsistencies.”

He also points to a report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) stating that the “adoption of an alternative method for calculating fugitive methane emissions gave many coal mines lower reported emissions without lifting a finger.”

Sins of emission

The aggregate numbers don’t tell the whole story, as half of the 33 largest polluters (those emitting more than 1 million tonnes) declared higher emissions than the previous year. These facilities represent 80 mega-tonnes or about 60% of emissions covered by the SGM, including the top two, Chevron’s Gorgon and Inpex’s Ichthys gas extraction and LNG processing plants.

Gorgon is responsible for around 2% of Australia’s total emissions – so much for its famed carbon capture and storage (CCS) plant – and its emissions were up 7.5% or 610,000 tonnes.

Icthys is responsible for about 1.5% of Australia’s emissions, and its emissions grew at twice the rate of Gorgon’s: 14.7% or 860.000 tonnes. And as McEwen points out, “these are solely emissions created at the facility: when the gas reaches its export destination and is burnt, those consumption emissions are an order of magnitude higher.”

Konnichiwa! The Japanese are not so keen on our gas. What’s the scam?

Overall, 147 facilities reported emissions above their baselines (two others miraculously reported actual emissions exactly as per their baseline).

Woodside’s North West Shelf project led the  under-performers on a tonnage basis, coming in 608,000 tonnes above its baseline, despite its reported emissions falling. Second was Queensland Alumina at 324,000 tonnes over its baseline. The next 12 facilities in the sinners league table are all coal mines, coming in a collective 2.5 million tonnes over baseline.

Six companies reported emissions that were over double their baselines: four coal mines, Santos’ Darwin LNG plant, and BHP’s NMK01 Nickel West facility.

All up, the under-performers were nearly 9.1 million tonnes above their baselines. This resulted in 7.1 million tonnes worth of Australian Carbon Credit Units being “surrendered” (i.e. used as an offset) and a further 1.4 million tonnes of newly minted Safeguard Mechanism Credits being presumably bought from over performers and surrendered. The balance was carried forward.

Sinners are winners

The largest claimed fall in reported emissions year on year was from the third highest emitting Safeguard facility: Woodside’s North West Shelf, which fell 12% or 840,000 tonnes (apparently due to reduced production), and Anglo Coal’s Moranbah North Mine, reportedly down a whopping 35% or 790,000 tonnes (again due to reduced production, plus claimed improvements in methane management).

In total, 68 facilities recorded gross emissions below their baselines, an over-performance summing to just under 9 million tonnes. Of these variations, the largest beneficiaries were Shell’s Floating LNG gas site in WA and Anglo’s Capcoal coal mine in QLD, each recording actual emissions over one million tonnes below their baselines.

This is a significant claimed over-performance of the industry average. FLNG’s reported emissions were under 1.9 million tonnes, 37% lower than their baseline of over 2.9 million tonnes. Capcoal’s was an even more impressive 49% lower!

Other winners were coal mines Anglo Grosvenor, Adani Carmichael, Endeavour Appin and Tahmoor Coal. Mount Bruce’s Gudai-Darri iron ore mine (operated by Rio Tinto) and Orica’s Kooragang Island ammonia plant rounded out the top ten winners (by tonnage).

The Gudai-Darri iron ore mine won the prize for the largest variance below its baseline, with its reported emissions of 130,000 tonnes, a whopping 79% below its baseline of 604,000 tonnes.

Collectively, the over-performers were permitted to issue nearly 8.3 million SMCs.

Is the SGM working? It’s complicated

David McEwen asks, “Is the Safeguard Mechanism working? Will it deliver genuine industrial emissions reductions as opposed to benefiting carbon credit markets? Will it stunt future mining or industrial investment, or send existing facilities to the wall?”

He contends it’s too early to establish any trends, but every year, as the baseline number drops by 4.9%, it will become harder for emitters, which will likely mean higher prices for carbon credits, and higher profits for those who do manage to reduce their emissions.

There is, however, an annually adjusted cap of $75 per ACCU/SMC. Under the Safeguard amendments negotiated by the cross-bench, all new facilities must meet or exceed best practice benchmarks, and new LNG (export) projects must achieve zero emissions of carbon dioxide mixed in with the methane gas that is being extracted. New shale gas projects are supposed to receive a baseline of zero.

“Given recent project approvals, we will see how this is applied in the years to come.”

As Michael Corleone found out, despite seeking absolution from the Pope, in the end, the price of his sins was too much to bear.

Another day, another gas approval as Labor caves on big dirty Barossa

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Something very fishy is going on in relation to the seat of Braddon in Tasmania. And Freedom of Information is helping shine a light on things. Transparency Warrior Rex Patrick reports.

EPBC Act changes

On Tuesday this week I participated in the (relatively) polite pre-election debate between myself, Labor’s Senator Karen Grogan and Greens’ Senator Barbara Pocock. The debate was organised by the University of Adelaide’s Politics and International Relations Association (PIRA) and was well attended, with more than 100 students and academic staff in attendance.

One of the questions raised by the moderator was, unsurprisingly, the environment. 

Pocock pointed to Labor’s coal and gas approvals which caused Grogan to allege that the Greens has somehow held up their changes to the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity and Conservation (EPBC) Act. 

“We haven’t been able to get the changes we wanted to make to the EPBC Act through the Parliament”, she said.

I unhelpfully chipped in from the side. “That’s not true, in the last sitting week you managed to change the EPBC Act to protect the Salmon industry at the expense of the Maugean Skate”.

Grogan burst into defence mode. “But the latest information shows that the extinction data on the Skate was wrong”

I rebutted, “Well, how would the public know. I was just refused access to the decision brief that was given to Tanya Plibersek to determine whether salmon fishing should continue.”

I’ll come back to that refusal, below.

Salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour

Salmon farming began in Macquarie Harbour in the late 1980s in what was a very small scale Australian owned operation. Over the years the operation has greatly expanded as large foreign owned non-tax paying companies have taken over. 

Scientists and environmentalists assert their significantly enhanced operations are dumping tonnes of antibiotics, chemicals, feed waste and faeces into waterways, threatening extinction of the Maugean Skate.

Midway through 2023 the Australia Institute, the Bob Brown Foundation and the Australian Marine Conservation Society formally requested a reconsideration of a 2012 EPBC Act decision that allows the industrial scale farming to occur.

One and a half years later, in February 2025, Plibersek was handed a ‘decision brief’ and set about making a decision. But a looming election appeared to cause a stop to the reconsideration.

Election fever

The Federal seat of Braddon, which encompasses Macquarie Harbour has switched regularly between the Liberals and Labor, is currently a Liberal held seat. The current Liberal member, who has held the seat since 2019, is retiring and Labor want it back.

To attract some of the slightly right leaning people who live in the seat, it has to be jobs before the extinction concerns for the Skate, even though the 2023 brief to the minister identified only 20 jobs at stake.

And that’s why Labor, supported by the Liberal Party, rammed a bill through the parliament in the last sitting week of parliament. It was introduced into the House on 25 March and rushed through the Senate on 26 March; with no legislative inquiry and a guillotined debate.

Move to enshrine eco approval smells fishy, critics say

 

The Bill, which passed, purportedly restricts the Minister for the Environment’s ability to reconsider past decisions under the EPBC Act 1999 to provide certainty to industries and communities by limiting the timeframe for reconsideration requests, particularly after actions have been ongoing for five years.

It was a calculated move in the interests of the Labor party; but not the environment.

Access refusal

I have been FOI’ing briefs provided to Plibersek on the Salmon farming re-consideration. It’s been like extracting teeth. A fight for a 2023 brief took a year to resolve, and cost the taxpayer more than $50K in lawyers’ fees. The government’s lawyers lost.

A win for transparency, a blow to secrecy, a loss for the Maugean Skate

Some bombshell revelations came when the brief was handed over.

After officials at Senate Estimates revealed that the actual ‘decision brief’ had been handed to the minister on February 22, I FOI’ed that brief.

After all, one of the objectives laid out in section 3 of the FOI Act is to ‘increase public participation in Government processes, with a view to promoting better – informed decision – making’. 

Flawed decision making

After their recent defeat in the Administrative Review Tribunal, I thought the Government would have just handed over the document.

After all, in trying to resist release of the 2023 they told the Tribunal that a preliminary review would be of little public interest. Surely that means the final brief would be of significant public interest.

The decision maker on the 2025 brief, Ms Valarie Hush, did not find there would be such significant public interest, but did acknowledge releasing the 2025 Brief would “inform debate on a matter of public importance”.

Ms Hush denied access to the document on the basis that the minister still had a decision to make. The preferred position of the Department, and indeed the Government at a political level, is that a fait accompli is presented to the public after the decision is made – and in strict contrast to the objects of the FOI Act mentioned above. 

Actually, the fact that the minister is still to make a decision in itself has created controversy – noting the Bill that was rushed through Parliament in March to kill the decision making process. Perhaps they are taking a cautious approach given legal action in relation to the legislation initiated by the Bob Brown Foundation.

Ms Hush went on to suggest that a release of the brief would somehow affect procedural fairness and impede the Minister making her decision.

The only problem with that is that the Administrative Review Tribunal flatly rejected that argument in the lost secrecy fight over the 2023 brief.

A convenient refusal

Perhaps Ms Hush didn’t read the Administrative Review Tribunal decision. I can’t explain what has happened. We’ll have to find that out on another appeal ($$$$). 

One thing’s for sure, not having the 2025 decision brief in the public domain will make the government happy. The last thing they want is the public forming their own view on the facts that are before the minister, especially the public in Braddon, Tasmania.

Meanwhile the Maugean Skate is hanging on for dear life on earth. Possible cause of extinction; election fever.

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Peter Dutton’s nuclear energy claims have been conspicuously absent from his election campaign. Now a leading energy analyst calculates the cost at more than $4.3 trillion, way above the Coalition’s touted $331B. Kim Wingerei reports.

The Coalition’s plans to solve ‘all’ our future energy needs with nuclear power were launched in 2023 and reinvigorated last year. Since then, there has been much talk about the cost, and how the cost would be met, with Peter Dutton sometimes quoting $331B and Anthony Albanese saying the cost will be over $600B. Both claims are based on numbers crunched by the parties’ respective favourite consultants.

The Coalition used Frontier Economics for its modelling, while the Government relied on renewable energy lobby group the Smart Energy Council.

They are both very wrong according to Tim Buckley of Climate Energy Finance (CEF), a philanthropically funded think tank focused on “energy transition consistent with the climate science”. Instead of the more limited modelling commissioned by the LNP and Labour, CEF has done a whole-of-economy analysis that demonstrates that the implied costs of the Federal Coalition’s nuclear plan run well into the trillions of dollars, ranging from $4.3-5.2 trillion by 2050,

including $3.5 trillion in lost GDP

That’s at least $4,300B, or around 60% more than Australia’s annual GDP last year ($2.71 trillion).

The CEF report says both the Coalition’s and the Government’s estimates of the price tag of building a nuclear industry in Australia restrict their analyses largely to costs incurred in the energy system itself.

Moreover, Frontier Economics’ modelling is “predicated on advocating for an energy pathway (“Progressive Change”) that differs dramatically to the energy pathway (“Step Change”) deemed most likely by the Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO) Integrated System Plan (ISP) and consistently advocated by the Labor Government.”

‘Progressive’ vs ‘Step Change’

While Frontier Economics bases its assumption on a rapid implementation of nuclear power plants to replace “old” energy sources, AMEO’s Step Change plan is for a gradual transition from fossil fuels (gas and coal) towards renewables over the next 20+ years.

The ISP‘s objective is to “optimise value to end consumers by designing the lowest cost, secure and reliable energy system capable of meeting any emissions trajectory determined by policy makers at an acceptable level of risk”.

The progressive scenario imposes enormous additional costs to the economy at large, according to Tim Buckley. It would “by necessity, impose many further flow-on costs to the Australian economy that are unaccounted for by the Frontier Economics modelling.”

These additional costs include underestimating the capital costs, higher fuel costs because of slower electrification under the progressive plan, the economic damage caused by up to 2 billion additional tonnes of carbon emissions, as well as loss of green energy export revenue.

Even without the $3.5 trillion hit to the economy as estimated by the CEF, the total costs of the Coalition’s nuclear plan are between $517B and $1.4 trillion above Frontier’s baseline numbers of between $331B and $446B, according to the AFR ($).

GDP goes up in vapor

The CEF report states, “GDP difference between Step Change and Progressive Change under the AEMO-modelled scenarios is so large that it swamps anything else – around $3.5 trillion in cumulative undiscounted lost GDP through 2050.”

According to Buckley, this comes about because the savings in investments “come at the cost of delivering much weaker outcomes for Australia.” Electricity demand is much lower for the progressive scenario than for AMEO’s Step Change plan for three reasons:

• There is much lower overall economic growth assumed in AEMO Progressive Change versus Step Change, with Australian GDP up to $300bn annually lower by 2050 than in Step Change.
• There is a significant contraction of large industrial facility demand, likely representing the exit of the aluminium industry, given Progressive Change does not deliver sufficient affordable and clean energy to enable that industry to continue beyond its existing electricity supply contracts.
• There is much less electrification of transport, buildings and industry. This means Australia stays largely reliant on importing our current $60bn p.a. of oil needs from the Middle East, a cost externalised from the Frontier ‘modelling’.

“All of these differences involve broader negative consequences that are not captured in the scope of the modelling, which is limited to the electricity sector. Lower industrial and wider economic output would mean less electricity investment to service it, but also means lost value added, exports, corporate and income tax revenue and so forth.”

This GDP loss reaches a staggering $300bn annually by 2050.

The real cost of nuclear

The most criticised aspect of the Coalition’s nuclear plan is the low-balling of the actual costs (and time taken) to build nuclear plants in a country that has no experience with them. As much of the plan is vague at best, CEF has looked at comparable nuclear plants built elsewhere.

Without taking inflation into account, that’s a cool $172.2B just to build seven of them. Dutton has said he wants to build two first, so based on experience elsewhere, that’s two plants up and running by, say, 2040, providing at best 2% of Australia’s electricity.

That’s assuming, of course, places are found that want them, with enough water to cool them, an industry created to maintain and support them, and Federal and State laws changed to approve them, to name just some of the obstacles on the way.

The CEF report says Frontier’s model assumes initial capacity is delivered by the end of 2035 per Coalition ambitions, which is just 1.8gw. Most of the buildout is assumed to be delivered in the 2040s. Frontier states that they amortise the costs of nuclear over 50 years. However, they only report costs incurred through 2050.

But perhaps the most curious part is that the “modelling used by the Coalition is based on an electricity system producing 31% less electricity than Labor’s preferred renewables-based approach.”

Forget nuclear, Australia is on fast lane to 100pc renewables

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Australia’s offshore oil and gas regulator is stepping on the gas ahead of the election, with two project approvals in as many weeks. Zacharias Szumer reports.

The Albanese government’s fossil fuel approval tally has risen to 18 after Australia’s offshore oil and gas regulator approved Santos’ controversial Barossa project.

The project, about 285km north-northwest off the coast of Darwin, is expected to come online in a matter of months, after the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) approved the gas project on Tuesday.

In February, Santos told investors that the project, which had been delayed by legal opposition from environmental groups, was on track to start production in the third quarter of 2025.The approval was met by condemnation by environmental groups such as the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), the Climate Council and the Environment Centre NT.

ACF’s Gavan McFadzean said Barossa is “Australia’s dirtiest gas project and it should never have been given the green light.”

Santos gets final tick for flagship Barossa gas project

Climate Council analyst Ben McLeod told the ABC that approval was “completely at odds” with Australia’s efforts to reduce emissions. Barossa project documents show that the $5.6B project would product around 380 million tonnes of C02 during its 25-year life span.

Labor distancing itself

A Labor campaign spokesperson said the Albanese government had no hand in the approval of Barossa.

“Technical regulatory decisions for offshore resources projects in Commonwealth waters are a matter for the independent expert regulator NOPSEMA,” the spokesperson told the ABC, adding that the project would still be subject to “the Albanese Government’s strengthened safeguard mechanism”.

However, close watchers of Australian fossil fuel developments, such as the Australia Institute’s Roderick Campbell, argue that Barossa is

the project that Labor bent over backwards to support.

Roderick pointed to legislation passed by Labor in November 2023 that the institute has argued was essential to the Barossa project going ahead. Because of the unusually high carbon dioxide content of Barossa, Santos would be unable to comply with safeguard mechanism obligations unless it offsets or captures CO2, the institute has argued. 

Greenhouse gas emissions. Winning slowly or losing the battle?

In late 2023, the institute’s Stephen Long wrote: 

“There’s no way, amid concerns about catastrophic global warming, that Santos could gain investor and financier support for the project absent a claim that it will stop the emissions from reaching the atmosphere”.

Labor’s ‘Environment Protection (Sea Dumping) Amendment (Using New Technologies to Fight Climate Change)‘ essentially created a “regulatory system for carbon dioxide exports, allowing CO2 to be transported into international waters and pumped under the seabed in what are known as carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects.”

Without that law, Santos’s $5.8B  Barossa gas project could not go ahead.

Spotlight on power bill promises as campaign fires up

Will Barossa use CCS?

It’s still unclear whether the company will seek to rely on CCS to reduce emissions at Barossa. “Carbon capture and storage has been rejected by Santos because it is not an available option for emissions reduction,” the company said in the final approval documents.

This is perhaps a slightly misleading phrasing. The company hasn’t outright rejected CCS as an option.

It’s simply saying that because planned CCS projects like Bayu Undan haven’t yet been approved or finalised, it can’t yet say whether it will seek to reduce emissions from Barossa by pumping carbon into such depleted underwater reservoirs.

Carbon capture con. Giant Gorgon project captures less emissions than ever

Environmental groups have suggested that Santos’ exclusion of CCS as a source of emissions reduction contradicts previous statements made by Santos.

Responding to these claims in the Barossa environmental plan, Santos said it had “made clear that Barossa would be a potential customer of the proposed Bayu-Undan CCS project if the project were to proceed.”

Kevin Morrison and John Robert from the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) wrote in late 2024 that Santos’ ability to make Barossa a net-zero gas production facility was “contingent on burying some of the CO2 it produces at Bayu-Undan”.

However, with Bayu Undan’s future still unclear, Santos will now need to rely on carbon offsets to meet its obligations under the safeguard mechanism.

Network of influence: is the carbon credits elite prolonging fossil fuels?

Santos said in the Barossa approval documents that it had already “entered into forward contracts for the purchase of 2.5 million Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) at fixed prices to be delivered and paid between December 2023 and January 2027”.

Australia’s carbon offset system has been criticised by some experts as being riddled with fraud and miscounting, claims the Albanese government has rejected.

Taking care of approvals

Last week, MWM reported that the Albanese government had approved or extended at least 17 fossil fuel projects and two carbon capture projects since taking office.

MWM’s tally only includes extractive projects, not supporting infrastructure such as gas pipelines or railways for coal mines.

It also only counts federal approvals, not those from state and territory governments. 

Caretaker of the Fossils: Beach approval takes government’s gas and coal tally to 17

 

This post was originally published on Michael West.

The government might be in caretaker mode, but that hasn’t stopped federal agencies from quietly giving new fossil fuel projects the green light. Zacharias Szumer reports. 

The Albanese government’s fossil fuel approval tally has risen to 17 after Australia’s offshore oil and gas regulator approved project in Victoria.

Beach Energy’s Otway Development was quietly approved and uploaded to the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority’s website over the last week. 

The project, which is approximately 17 km south of the Victorian mainland, is “designed to explore and develop new gas discoveries in the offshore Otway Basin,” the project proposal reads. 

Beach Energy says the project, which will supply gas to the Australian domestic market, “provides an opportunity to develop currently stranded gas reserves and future resources in the offshore Otway Basin”. 

The company has forecast that emissions associated with gas production from the project itself – i.e. scope one emissions – would fall below the Australia’s Safeguard Mechanism threshold. 

This means that Beach Energy will not have to either reduce or offset its emissions alongside large greenhouse gas emitting facilities whose production emissions are above the threshold. 

Greenhouse gas emissions. Winning slowly or losing the battle?

The company says it has “engaged with the Clean Energy Regulator to discuss the Safeguard Mechanism boundary” and that it “will continue these discussions with the Clean Energy regulator as the Project progresses”.

On the issue of scope three emissions – i.e. those produced in transporting and burning the gas to produce heat or electricity – the proposal simply says that these will be “managed in accordance with Australia’s regulatory regime”.

The company says production of gas from the nearby Otway Gas Plant is “critical in ensuring Victoria’s energy security as demand for gas is expected to continue in Victoria and the south-eastern states particularly as a result of the decline in consumption of more emission intensive coal associated with the closure of coal-fired power stations”.

Tanya’s Tally: Albo government fossil fuel approvals shoot to 16

In December, MWM reported that the Albanese government had approved or extended at least 16 fossil fuel projects and two carbon capture projects since taking office.

MWM’s tally only includes extractive projects – not supporting infrastructure such as gas pipelines or railways for coal mines.

It only counts federal approvals, not those from state and territory governments. 

Another coal project. BHP spins mine approval as pumped hydro ‘coal lakes’

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Gas is the talk of the town, while nuclear is not, but a massive increase in solar power generation capacity has already put Australia on the fast track to a 100% renewable energy future. Solar cell engineer Andrew Blakers explains.

An academic living in cold Canberra retired his gas heaters a few years ago and installed electric heat pumps for space and water heating. His gas bill went to zero. He also bought an electric vehicle, so his petrol bill went to zero.

He then installed rooftop solar panels that export enough solar electricity to the grid to pay for electricity imports at night, so his electricity bill also went to zero. That Canberra academic will get his money back from these energy investments in about eight years.

I am that academic.

Solar energy is causing the fastest energy change in history. Along with support from wind energy, it offers unlimited, cheap, clean and reliable energy forever.

With energy storage effectively a problem solved, the required raw materials impossible to exhaust — despite some misconceptions in the community — and an Australian transition gathering pace,

solar and wind are becoming a superhighway to a future of 100 percent renewable energy.

While the technological arguments for solar and wind power are compelling, it’s clear renewables have to overcome obstacles.

One is the division over the impact of the rollout of renewable energy infrastructure. It has divided affected communities across the country and needs to be addressed. Generous compensation and effective education about large regional economic opportunities are good ways forward.

There is also the political debate about what form Australia’s energy transition should take.

Greenhouse gas emissions. Winning slowly or losing the battle?

Solar surge

Yet, beyond those issues, solar offers unlimited energy for billions of years and provides the cheapest energy in history with zero greenhouse gases, zero smog and zero water consumption.

That explains why solar energy generation is growing tenfold each decade and, with support from wind, dominates global power station construction markets, while global nuclear electricity generation has been static for 30 years and is largely irrelevant.

In 2024, twice as much new solar generation capacity — about 560 gigawatts — was added compared with all other systems put together. Wind, hydro, coal, gas and nuclear added up to about 280 gigawatts.

There will be more global solar generation capacity in 2030 than everything else combined, assuming current growth rates continue. Solar generation will pass wind and nuclear generation this year and should catch coal generation around 2031.

About 37 percent of Australia’s electricity already comes from solar and wind, with an additional 6 percent from hydroelectric power stations that were built decades ago.

More solar energy is generated per person in Australia than in any other country.

Solar is by far the best method of removing fossil fuels, which cause three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions, from the economy.

In Australia, 99 percent of new generation capacity installed since 2015 has been solar and wind, and it is all private money. The energy market is saying very clearly that solar and wind have won the energy race and energy policies are consistent with reaching the government target of 82 percent renewable electricity by 2030.

Solar on the roof coupled with energy storage in a hot water tank, an EV battery and a home battery allows a family to ride through interruptions to gas, petrol and electricity supply and that energy resilience can apply at domestic, city, state and national levels.

Managing the balance

Balancing high levels of solar and wind energy to avoid supply interruptions is straightforward at low cost using off-the-shelf technology available from vast production lines. New transmission brings new solar and wind power into the cities and also smooths out the vagaries of local weather by transmitting solar and wind electricity to where it is needed.

For example, if it is raining in Victoria and sunny in New South Wales, then electricity can be transmitted south. Storage comprises batteries for short-term storage of a few hours and pumped hydro energy storage for hours to days.

Together, batteries and pumped hydro solve the energy storage issues.

Pumped hydro energy storage provides about 95 percent of global energy storage. It typically comprises two reservoirs located a few kilometres apart and with an altitude difference of between 500 and 1,000 metres.

On sunny or windy days, renewable sources like solar or wind power are used to pump water into the uphill reservoir, and during the night, the water flows back downhill through the turbine to recover the stored energy.

The same water can go up and down between the reservoirs for 100 years. Global potential pumped hydro energy storage is equivalent to two trillion electric vehicle batteries.

Australia has about 300 times more pumped hydro energy storage potential than needed to support 100 percent renewable electricity. It already has three pumped hydro systems, with two more under construction.

Globally, the world has more than 820,000 potential pumped hydro sites, which is about 200 times more than we need to support a 100 percent renewable energy system.

When eventually complete, Snowy 2.0 will provide 85 percent of energy storage in the national energy market at a cost 10 times lower than equivalent batteries and with a lifetime that is five times longer.

Snowy Hydro performance shrouded in secrecy. The three-step trick.

Myths and misconceptions

There are those — often vested interests — who throw up arguments against solar energy, regardless of what the facts say about its merits.

Here are a few:

• It takes up valuable farmland. Most of the area in solar and wind farms remains in use for agriculture. The area withdrawn from agriculture to generate all our energy from solar and wind is very small, equating to about the size of a large living room per person.
• The rural landscape can’t fit in any more solar and wind farms. Heat maps developed by researchers at the Australian National University show the vast number of good locations for solar and wind farms.
• Renewable infrastructure is a blight on the landscape. Hosts of solar and wind farms (and their neighbours) are generously compensated, while hosts of transmission lines are paid more than $200,000 per km. All the solar farms, wind farms, transmission and pumped hydro are in regional areas, which means that vast amounts of money and employment are flowing into regional areas. Solar farms are usually invisible from other properties. Open-cut roads, buildings, open-cut coal mines and gas fields are also visible in the landscape. People in cities have a far more cluttered view from their windows than rural people.
• We will run out of critical minerals. No critical minerals are required, only substitutable minerals. Solar panels require silicon for the solar cells, glass, plastic and conductors, which are made from extremely abundant materials.
• We will drown in solar panel waste. The amount of solar panel waste generated when all energy (not just electricity) comes from solar amounts to about 16 kg per person per year (mostly glass). Panel waste is a small and solvable problem.

Jobs and Hope – the election slogan I’d love to hear

Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Peter Dutton’s plan to introduce a gas reservation scheme on the East Coast may be good politics, but industry experts say it is unlikely to lower domestic gas prices for a long time, if at all, Kim Wingerei reports.

A gas reservation scheme – forcing suppliers to set aside a certain amount for domestic use – is not a new idea. It was last floated by the LNP government in 2019, but nothing much came of it then.

It also remains unclear if the Commonwealth has the Constitutional power to unilaterally impose a domestic reservation scheme. It’s the states which preside over onshore drilling.

Labor has already hinted at a similar plan, and if recent examples of ‘policy matching’ are a guide, Albanese may just adopt Dutton’s suggestion.

Redacted. Gas lobby in lock-step with Government on “secret” gas reservation options

Dutton’s promise is to push down gas prices by diverting East Coast LNG spot exports into the domestic market. The Coalition also intends to ($) unlock ‘bucketloads’ of new gas by ensuring faster project approvals and through taxpayer investments in new gas infrastructure.

As is his wont, Dutton’s plan is low on details, particularly when it comes to how the reservation policy would work in practice.

According to gas analyst Josh Runciman of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), “Diverting LNG exports will, in the immediate term, undoubtedly put downward pressure on gas prices and help to ease cost-of-living pressures.”

The impact of faster gas approvals on gas prices in the short term is less certain.

Part of the plan is to accelerate gas project approvals. However, “accelerating approvals is highly unlikely to make a meaningful difference this decade,” says Runciman”

“This is because only a limited number of projects could actually benefit from faster approvals from the federal government, which has oversight of offshore gas developments. (Onshore gas approvals sit with the states and territories.)

The Coalition has already flagged its intention to fast-track ($) Woodside’s North West Shelf project, but this gas will be sold either into Western Australia or into export markets for liquefied natural gas (LNG), rather than to the east coast.”

“On the east coast, the Coalition’s policy is likely to target new developments in offshore Victoria. This makes sense given the proximity of these projects to major demand centres.

“Existing infrastructure also means they are likely to have a stronger business case than projects in remote basins that require new infrastructure, such as the North Bowen and Beetaloo basins. Investors may therefore be more prepared to back such projects given the lower asset-stranding risks.”

Empire building in the Beetaloo, funded by Federal Government gas grants

“The real question, however, is whether the Coalition’s policy will bring new Victorian gas projects to market quickly. Generally, it takes two to five years for a project to deliver gas once it has been issued a production licence, and potentially much longer for projects in the exploration and appraisal stage.”

That is to say, the Coalition’s policy may not lead to much new gas production in the next few years.

Domestic demand down

Runciman also points out that new gas production may not even be supplied to the domestic market in quantities that would drive down prices. In the decade since LNG exports from Queensland began, East Coast gas production has more than doubled. Over the same period, gas prices have tripled and non-LNG domestic gas consumption has fallen materially.

“The reason for this is that the LNG sector has soaked up all of this new gas supply (and then some) to maximise exports. Some of the Queensland LNG projects continue to export more gas than required to meet their long-term contracts, even as the LNG exporters have shifted from net contributors to the domestic market to net withdrawers.”

Another issue is that bringing the gas to consumers requires infrastructure upgrades, which takes time, at least one or more election cycles.

Opportunity missed

The IEEFA points out that demand management may be a better option to bring prices down.

For example, Victorian households use substantial amounts of gas for space and hot water heating, and for cooking. However, rapid residential electrification, using more efficient electrical appliances, would slash gas demand while also reducing household energy bills.

IEEFA has also identified large untapped opportunities to deploy heat pumps in industry, in particular in the food and beverage sector, which is a large gas user in Victoria.

This could deliver large decreases in gas demand while only driving small increases in electricity use, and would reduce overall energy costs for businesses. There is a clear role for governments to do more to help households and industry make the switch away from gas.

Moreover, while Dutton’s plan is essentially aimed at increasing supply, the bottom line is that there is no shortage.

Mark Ogge of The Australian Institute: “There is no gas shortage and no need to approve new gas projects if exports are limited.”

Limiting exports is the only way to reverse this price increase.

Gas prices up, Woodside profits up, customers down

This post was originally published on Michael West.

With the election campaign already in full swing, what progress has Australia made towards emission reductions under Labor? Are we better informed and better prepared? David McEwen with some answers.

On an electricity grid-focused social media group, which is not generally frequented by the sort of brain-dead fossil trolls who will put a laughing emoji or inane comment on any post involving renewables or electric vehicles, I was recently accosted by a chap whose – apparently legit – profile identified him as a quality manager at an outdoor education provider.

His original post was a claim that delays in closing coal plants “do not lead to a negative climate impact.” He took objection to my assertion that winning slowly on climate is still losing, with a sarcastic sounding “ummmmm, no.” Five “m’s” – I counted.

Now, I’m right, and he (and the original poster) is flat-out wrong, but clearly, not enough people understand what should be basic physics and chemistry drummed into every high school student.

Here’s how it works.

A little goes a long way

Carbon dioxide is a trace gas in the atmosphere. About 0.04%, as Alan Jones was happy to remind us during the 2010s. Put another way, that’s 400 parts per million (ppm). If you’re thinking, like Alan, that there’s no way that a change in such a small concentration of carbon dioxide could make a difference, you might consider that it only takes about 1 milligram of arsenic per kilogram of body weight to kill someone. That’s just 1 ppm: food for thought, perhaps.

In 2024, the average was nearly 425 ppm and increasing at an accelerating rate.

When Charles Keeling first started taking measurements at Mauna Loa in Hawaii in 1958, the level was 311 ppm. Using tree-ring, ice-core and other data sources, scientists have demonstrated that the level at the start of the Industrial Revolution was about 280 ppm and had been relatively stable for the preceding several thousand years (as shown in Figure 1). This facilitated a reasonably consistent climate, allowing humans to learn agriculture and form increasingly complex societies.

That means that in the 66 years since direct observations began (a blink of an eye in the geological timescales these things normally take place over), the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by 36%.

Over the last two hundred years, it’s up by over 50%. These are incredibly fast changes in climatic terms.

Carbon dioxide is one of a number of so-called greenhouse gases (GHGs) that re-radiate heat they receive from the sun. They work sort of like a blanket on a bed, trapping heat near the surface. Without these trace gases, it’s estimated that earth’s average temperature (i.e. all parts of earth over an entire year) would be about -18^oC instead of the +15^oC we are used to.

What’s happened as carbon dioxide has increased? Sure enough, observed average temperatures have increased, as shown below. Relative to when global temperature observations started in the mid-1800s, temperatures in 2024 were up over 1.5^oC, with most of the rise ironically happening since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, at which plans were made to do something about climate change.

To clarify, there is a logarithmic effect at play here. As carbon dioxide concentration increases, each additional unit has a smaller warming effect, which is why increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide by half has only increased temperatures by 1.5 degrees.

Scientists are in no doubt that the warming is due to humanity’s emissions of extra greenhouse gases, through digging up and burning enormous quantities of so-called fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – for our energy needs, clearing vast amounts of forest for our agricultural needs, exponentially increasing ruminant animal herds, and various chemical processes including making cement.

In the process, we’re also gravely threatening other planetary boundaries related to the preservation of the biodiverse ecosystems that underpin our economy and lives.

Urgency required

As concentrations of carbon dioxide (and other GHGs) have increased, so have global average temperatures, unleashing a range of deleterious impacts, including more frequent and severe extreme and destructive weather events, sea level rise, and ocean acidification leading to the collapse of marine ecosystems and food supplies.

Raising sea levels due to thermal expansion and melting land ice is already unstoppable, and we have locked in multi-metre rise over the coming centuries,

threatening a billion people living and farming in low-lying coastal areas.

Mr “outdoor education quality manager” might claim that these impacts won’t be catastrophic and, indeed, there could be positive outcomes. “CO2 is plant food,” he might post, omitting that you can have too much of a good thing, as those who have over-watered a house plant might attest.

However, recent research suggests that we reached “peak carbon sequestration” by plants over a decade ago. Meanwhile, many plant species thrive in a reasonably narrow band of optimal temperature and precipitation. More temperature extremes and less consistent rainfall – increasingly see-sawing abruptly from too much to too little – are far from conducive to high yields.

New Report: coal and gas emissions “set to soar” under Safeguard Mechanism

But aren’t we expecting global human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide to peak soon and start declining? Hopefully, yes.

And given those graphs are all correlated, won’t that mean that as emissions start to reduce, then temperatures and carbon dioxide concentrations will also start to reduce? Unfortunately, in this case, correlation is not causation.

Because carbon dioxide, and almost every other greenhouse gas (except methane), are pretty stable molecules, they hang around in the atmosphere for a long time. Hundreds to many thousands of years. Because carbon dioxide is plant food and dissolves in water, about half of humanity’s excess emissions are removed from the atmosphere quite quickly.) But the other half persists for much longer, as you can see below.

Emissions are cumulative

This means a lot of what we emitted into the atmosphere two hundred years ago is still there, still doing its warming trick, and,

a lot of the much greater annual amount we’re emitting today will still be around in another 200 years.

Back to our blanket on the bed example, it’s analogous to adding a new cover every year but not taking any away. In the 1800s, it was just a sheet added each year. Then it became a cotton throw, a woollen blanket, and now it’s a goose-down quilt. Emissions accumulate in the atmosphere.

Therefore, as emissions start to decrease, we’re still adding an extra cover to the bed each year; it’s just that they start to get thinner again. We’re still not taking any off. As such, the last ten years are simultaneously the coolest decade many adults will ever experience again and the hottest ten years on record.

If we make it to zero net emissions in a way the global climate system can respond to, rather than simply what it says on somebody’s offset spreadsheet), we can expect temperatures to stabilise at some ghastly new normal.

Even at zero net emissions, greenhouse concentrations and temperatures will keep rising due to arctic ice albedo, permafrost melting and releasing trapped methane. In addition, we also need to deal with a heating pulse associated with ditching our addiction to fossil fuels, given the current cooling effect benefit of some of the so-called aerosols released when we burn coal, oil and gas.

Your vote counts

The prognosis is grim, and global geopolitics are currently working against a safe future for humanity and the other species we cohabit with.

The only hope is for countries to elect governments committed to genuine, aggressive climate action.

And while Australia may seem to be an emissions minnow, we only account for about 1% of reported global emissions. In fact, our position as a major miner and exporter of both fossil fuels and metals such as iron ore, whose traditional processing produces vast amounts of emissions, means

Australia actually has influence over nearly 10% of global emissions.

Plus, we have the renewable resources (sun, wind, empty land and know-how) to significantly reduce our domestic and exported emissions while potentially growing the value of our exports, as explained in detail by economist Ross Garnaut. We just need the political focus and determination to make it happen.

Grant King and the Big Gas Con – how fossil fuel giants are cheating Australia’s emissions system

 

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Residents of the Manning Valley in NSW are raising concerns about foreign-owned companies’ plans to extract serpentine ore for carbon capture and storage, risking the release of asbestos dust. Kim Wingerei reports.

Although it is early days, the potential scale of a future mine concerns Ian Barbour and other residents of Mount George, a likely site for a mining operation, “Our valley is mainly farming and tourism-based, and we do not want another Hunter Valley on the Manning River, one of the only delta rivers in the southern hemisphere.”

The risk of asbestos dust contamination is an added concern, and while the Federal Government has signed up for the world-wide ban on asbestos, the NSW Government has given the green light to MCI Carbon to conduct exploratory drilling in areas known to contain asbestos.

The much-debated use of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)  to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions is at the heart of the exploration license granted to the Newcastle (NSW) based company.

The University of Newcastle is a research partner, and MCI has an illustrious list of multi-national shareholders, including explosives supplier Orica, London-based multinational mining company RHI Magnesita, and a slew of Japanese banks and trading houses.

In July 2024, MCI was given a Federal Government grant of $14.5m from the Carbon Capture Technologies Program (CCTP) to “to produce building materials from carbon dioxide released during cement production.” Since then, Mitsubishi UBE Cement Corporation (MUCC) has invested US$5m in the company.

In 2022 and 2023, MCI was granted exploration licenses by NSW Resources to explore for minerals in several areas west of Taree in the Manning Valley. The company also holds exploration licenses in areas west of Bathurst.

MCI Carbon and its backers are specifically looking to explore Serpentine rock for use in the decarbonisation process. Serpentine rock commonly contains chrysotile asbestos.

Carbon capture and asbestos

Mineral carbonation is a type of Carbon Capture. It involves converting CO2 into forms that can be buried, and in doing so removes the CO2 from the atmosphere. In scientific terms, mineral carbonation refers to the fixation of carbon dioxide (CO2) using alkaline and alkaline-earth oxides, such as calcium oxide (CaO) and magnesium oxide (MgO) into CaCO3 and MgCO3.

Pure calcium and magnesium oxide minerals are rare in nature, but abundant quantities of minerals containing these oxides can be found in rocks such as serpentinites.

MCI needs serpentine ore, which contains asbestos, to successfully remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

According to the Australian Government’s Asbestos Safety website, “Chrysolite Asbestos was banned in Australia in 2003 due to its known cancer-causing properties.”

However, internationally, there have been attempts to diminish the dangers of chrysotile asbestos to support the ongoing mining of chrysotile and the manufacture of asbestos-containing products. This has led to its continued use as a building material in some low and middle-income countries in the false belief that it can be used safely.

Bruce Robertson, an independent energy industry analyst who lives in the Manning Valley says, “It would seem that NSW has become a ‘low and middle-income country’ as using serpentine with a high probability of containing asbestos in building products is one of MCI carbon’s aims.”

A 2019 research paper states “MCi’s project has primarily been studying the carbonation of serpentine, which is an abundant mineral in New South Wales … It is believed that the future feedstock supply needs will be available on the gigatonne scale.”

Potential giant mining operation

MCI is working with Orica and others in an initiative to “to eliminate at least 567,000t CO2e per year from the site’s operations and 11 per cent of Australia’s total chemical industry process emissions.”

That is a commendable goal, of course, but to achieve that, an estimated “1.6 to 3.7 tonnes of ore (depending on the magnesium content of the ore) are typically required to fix one tonne of CO2.” According to Ian Barbour, the project would “require between 900,000 and 2 million tonnes of serpentine ore to meet their stated goals, yearly.”

To put that in perspective, 2 million tonnes of ore equates to approx. 17,000 triple road train truckloads every year, or 50 road trains a day rolling down the valley.

Bruce Robertson adds that any mining operation in the Manning Valley must also account for an uncontained river that floods regularly and suddenly, with peaks up to 8 meters. “With the water catchment at the bottom end, it also means the risk of drinking water contamination from a mine site up-river is very high,” Robertson said.

Both Barbour and Robertson attended a recent ‘town hall’ meeting called to discuss the MCI project’s impact on the community, attracting more than 400 people.

Asbestos risk

Similar to Hunter Valley coal mines, the extraction of serpentine rock means surface mining.

Despite the global ban on asbestos that Australia has signed up for, MCI Carbon’s exploration license specifically names asbestos as one of the minerals, and there are no special conditions referring to the risk of asbestos contamination when extracting serpentine ore.

The asbestos safety website says, “It has been proven that all forms of asbestos, including chrysotile, cause asbestosis, mesothelioma and cancers of the lung, larynx and ovary. There is also evidence in humans that asbestos causes cancers of the pharynx, stomach and colorectum.”

Globally, it is estimated that 219,000 deaths annually can be attributed to occupational exposure to asbestos, and asbestos-related diseases still contribute to approximately 4000 deaths in Australia each year. Have the lessons of James Hardie been forgotten?

As Robertson says, “The Australian government supports a ban on asbestos yet the NSW government has awarded mining exploration leases in an area where there is a high asbestos potential according to the NSW government’s own data.”

Risk mitigation

MWM asked MCI Carbon how they plan to mitigate the risk of asbestos contamination during exploration. The company has replied,

“Serpentinite may occasionally contain Naturally Occurring Asbestos (NOA). MCi Carbon will map potential asbestos zones with drone geological surveys and conduct small-scale drilling where asbestos is unlikely to be present. Safety is our top priority, and we use best practice in geology. Everyone on our team undergoes mandatory asbestos training, which includes safe work practices and use of personal protective equipment. We use dust suppression and carefully monitor air quality. Any material leaving the site is transported in line with NSW Resources Regulator hazardous materials rules.”

The company has also published a Fact Sheet.

Carbon capture con. Giant Gorgon project captures less emissions than ever

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Poor regulations and bureaucratic corner-cutting threaten ecosystems on the NSW’s Mid-North Coast and are a risk for blueberry consumers across Australia. Andrew Gardiner reports.

Australians face a little-known but very real health hazard thanks to blueberry pesticide regulations green-lit by an agency in the throes of moving to Barnaby Joyce’s backyard. Meanwhile, the region growing those blueberries, once famous for bananas, faces ecological catastrophe from the kind of regulatory regime you’d see in a banana republic.

Consumers of blueberries in Australia – a $440 million crop in NSW’s Mid North Coast region – face possible health hazards, including headache, sweating, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, loss of coordination, muscle twitching, and even death (at very high doses) from dimethoate, a neurotoxin that kills fruit fly and other pests but can also attack the human nervous system.

Dimethoate is banned in Europe and elsewhere, but it can be harvested and sent to Australian supermarkets within a day of being sprayed on blueberries.

“To me, that’s unsafe for Australian consumers. Raspberries and blackberries have to wait a week and tomatoes 21 days before they’re sent to market, and I’m yet to receive a satisfactory, scientific explanation as to why blueberries can hit the shelves in 24 hours,” a Mid-North Coast agronomist advising local activists told MWM.

It seems that commerce, and political expediency, take priority over public health.

The US Environmental Protection Agency classified dimethoate as a “possible human carcinogen,” but that appears not to have bothered the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA), which set the one-day blueberry withholding period.

APVMA relocation controversy

A scathing 2023 report alleged “industry capture, poor workplace culture and a lack of corporate knowledge and leadership” at APVMA after then-agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce moved the agency to Armidale, in the heart of his electorate.

The APVMA responded to those claims in November 2024, stating that “The APVMA has already made significant progress to address the findings in the Rapid Evaluation and other reviews to improve its operations, workplace culture, governance, transparency, accountability and stakeholder engagement”

Joyce and his successor, Bridget McKenzie, drove APVMA’s relocation from Canberra to Armidale, 750 km away, although just 15 employees actually made the move. This contributed to a massive brain drain and “serious and systemic issues”. APVMA chief executive Lisa Croft and chair Carmel Hillyard both resigned following Labor’s election win in 2022.

AVPMA’s move to Barnaby Joyce’s Armidale backyard was so poorly conceived, sources told MWM, that relocated public servants were at one stage forced to bring their laptops and work at a local McDonalds for lack of suitable office facilities.

The then-Nationals leader had a sloganistic retort for critics of the move: his grand plans for decentralisation would spread the largesse of government “in a more abundant way across the nation, not have it in little pockets, or one pocket, called Canberra”.

Barnaby Joyce’s decision to move pesticides regulator a huge financial risk

Blueberry aficionados aren’t the only ones vulnerable to dimethoate and other chemicals. Run-off from blueberry farms reportedly does lasting damage to the ecosystem of waterways such as teeming-with-life Hearnes Lake (pictured below) while chemicals leach into ground water around Coffs Harbour and the Nambucca Valley, say scientists.

Blueberry farming is an intensive affair, with heavy rain often pushing a cocktail of fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides and fungicides into creeks and rivers. Among the impacts on aquatic life, the agronomist told MWM, were a catastrophic fish kill in 2018 and, more recently, “prawns switching genders from male to female,” linked in some eyes to high levels of a herbicide which can warp sexual development.

Area in crisis

Activists insist the area is now in crisis.

“Hearnes Lake isn’t dead yet, but it’s almost there. Scientist Maxine Rowley found 12 chemicals in Hearnes Lake, and two of those had been banned in NSW since 2006,” the agronomist told MWM.

Therein lies the problem for both the local ecology and blueberry consumers: with honourable exceptions, there’s a disturbing lack of enthusiasm for curbing the excesses of the burgeoning blueberry industry at all levels of government.

Pesticide and chemical monitoring are NSW government responsibilities, but regulatory action is rare and sometimes of questionable value. Just last year, the NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) proclaimed that “Nambucca waterways (are) not impacted by excessive pesticides,” only to be pilloried by community groups who pointed out they were monitoring outflows in the wrong place.

Often it’s left to those community groups – like Maxine Rowley’s Sandy Beach Action Group (or SANDBAG for short) –along with academics and activist councillors to pick up the slack. They’re enthusiastic but underfunded and limited in what they can do, a reality that doesn’t seem to bother the blueberry farmers or their local state member, National Party deputy leader Gurmesh Singh.

Inadequate regulation

At a council level, activists say regulations aimed at putting a lid on the ecological carnage are either on the books but not adequately enforced (in Coffs Harbour) or in the works but held up by state authorities (with the devil in the detail) in Nambucca Valley.

“As things stand, other primary producers, from wine to beef cattle, must put in Development Applications (DAs), conform to safety and impact protocols and allow neighbours to have a say,” Nambucca Valley councillor Susan Jenvey told MWM. “But not blueberry farmers, who employ hundreds of people and can just go ahead.

So you get spray drift (into neighbouring properties) and soil nitrogen levels that are hundreds of times above normal.

“Consent (for more berry farming) must have strict conditions attached, and that’s where we intend to fight,” the agronomist added on the still-to-be-finalised regulations for Nambucca Valley. A meeting between councillors and the NSW Department of Primary Industries to sort out details of a DA regime is scheduled for February.

MWM is not suggesting ministers, agencies, politicians, councillors, or blueberry farmers have acted illegally or unethically in their conduct on this matter. Yet they showed little enthusiasm to be questioned about it.

We reached out to representatives of the above, and the only response (aside from Coffs Harbour Council’s “no comment”) was from APVMA, which pointed out its review of dimethoate on blueberries preceded the agency’s move to Armidale.

Growers respond

Growers’ group Berries Australia has the unenviable task of fighting the tide of public opinion and popular notions that blueberry farming is unsustainable, destructive to surrounding waterways and exploitative of the many seasonal workers brought in to pick the crop.

“We don’t support any growers not complying with the rules,” its executive director, Rachel McKenzie, said.

But there’s a reason notions like these become popular. Some seasonal workers from Fiji told local activists they were paid the equivalent (per kg) of just $12 per hour, less than half the award rate of $29.33. After long hours in the sub-tropical sun, they rest up in igloo dormitories and reportedly aren’t always paid.

“I know of some workers who say their pay doesn’t always make it home to their families in Fiji. There appears to be little in the way of enforcement of award rates and conditions, and the whole system seems geared to simply keep the wheels of commerce turning,” the agronomist told MWM.

On the issue of pesticides in waterways, local media reports that in blueberry-rich Woolgoolga, north of Coffs Harbour, more than half of inspections by the NSW EPA from 2021-23 sparked formal investigations. That’s a remarkable figure, said a source for this story, indicating widespread flaunting of the rules.

While offending farms were forced to lift their game on wastewater capture, irrigation systems or pesticide storage, activists say there are plenty more simply slipping through the cracks and that more inspections are a must. Councillor Jenvey told MWM:

There’s a history of environmental impacts from blueberry farms; the land is seen as a resource rather than something to be cared for.

“As things stand, the number of farms transitioning to berries is growing exponentially. Our ecology is being overwhelmed.

Blueberry Hill thrills

Bridget McKenzie, who oversaw the final stages of AVPMA’s move, and state and federal Nationals Gurmesh Singh both enjoy close ties with the blueberry farmers of Coffs Harbour. They have demonstrated in word and deed a commitment to larger agricultural (and mining) concerns like Oz Group Co-op, formerly Oz Berries, which accounts for the vast majority of the sector on NSW’s Mid North Coast.

Activists believe this helps explain why blueberries can be shipped off to supermarket shelves within a day after being dipped in dimethoate, a “possible human carcinogen,” and why the waterways and marine life of NSW’s Mid North Coast appear to be choking on a poisonous flow that few in government have lifted a finger to stop.

While Labor took charge at both state and federal levels in 2022-23, not a lot appears to have changed since then.

“Until this disaster becomes a public scandal as we saw over intensive farming on the Hawkesbury and Nepean Rivers (north and west of Sydney), official attention will be tepid at best,” the agronomist said.

Hundreds of dead fish (in 2018) didn’t get us there; does someone have to die for us to get attention?

Saving Tasmania’s Maugean Skate – a victim of extinction politics

 

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Gas consumers in Western Australian have long enjoyed lower prices than the Eastern states, but those days are done as Woodside doubles its WA gas price. Peter Milne reports from out west.

According to the Woodside’s website, “Woodside has been supplying reliable, competitively priced domestic gas to Western Australia since 1984 and will continue to do so”.

Well, after digging through Woodside’s financial reports over the past ten years, it seems that “competitively priced” means price rises so steep that much of WA’s heavy industry may be uncompetitive if it continues.

Woodside has doubled its WA gas price in 5 years, and local industry in Australia’s largest gas-exporting state is concerned gas producers are prioritising exports at their expense. Woodside supplies 19 per cent of the WA market.

Most of the jump has occurred in the past three years, with the average price Woodside fetched for its share of gas from the North West Shelf, Pluto and Wheatstone projects rising from $3.70 to $6.50 a gigajoule.

There is no reason to believe the prices received by WA’s third biggest supplier are an outlier from its competitors. Chevron, the largest supplier to the market, does not publish its average price.

Just six years ago, then premier Mark McGowan touted WA’s “abundant supply of cheap gas” to lure industry in the eastern states westwards.

Since then, that promised abundance in Australia’s most gas-dependent state has turned into a likely shortage. In December, the Australian Energy Market Operator predicted a tight market this decade and a significant shortage in the 2030s.

Potential investors need confidence that gas will be both available and affordable for a decade or more to justify projects with long payback periods.

The AEMO forecast to 2034 misses further bad news for gas buyers. From about 2036, the Chevron-led Gorgon project that supplies about 25 per cent of the WA market will no longer be obliged to supply the local market.

Santos and the mythical gas shortage. What’s the scam?

Industry wants policy enforced

Richard Harris, spokesman for the Domgas Alliance of large WA gas users, said it typically refrained from commenting on gas prices from individual producers.

“However, it is important to highlight that the WA domestic gas policy was established to ensure an adequate supply of gas to meet WA’s domestic consumer needs at a cost advantage compared to international LNG markets,” he said.

Harris said there was genuine concern within the industry that some LNG producers may be prioritising the more profitable export market over fulfilling their domestic gas obligations. “This could restrict supply for local WA industries and drive up prices for local consumers,” he said.

The future of investments by Domgas Alliance members – that include WA’s biggest gas consumer Alcoa, Wesfarmers Chemicals and Yara Pilbara Fertilisers – or other large gas users could be threatened if gas prices continue to rise.

Some large gas users will consider curtailing or ceasing their operations in WA if the gas price hits $7.93/GJ – 22 per cent higher than Woodside’s average price in 2024 – according to AEMO’s 2024 WA Gas Statement of Opportunities

From AEMO’s survey of industry, the median price that would cause curtailment or shutdown was $10.75/GJ. Over the past two years, gas contracts above $10/GJ have been agreed in WA, according to a number of industry participants not authorised to speak to the media.

Woodside did not answer questions about what factors led to the spike in its WA gas price.

The WA gas market is tight in part because Woodside’s Pluto LNG has delivered just a fraction of the nominal 15 per cent of gas exports headlined in the state’s much-touted domestic gas policy, courtesy of an unenforceable deal made in 2003.

Domestic supply

A Woodside spokesman said it was in ongoing discussions with the WA Government about how it could support the state’s energy needs from all its assets, including Pluto.

“Through these discussions, Woodside agreed to make up to an additional 50 terajoules a day of domestic gas available in WA in both 2024 and 2025 to meet the forecast market shortfall,” he said. “We have always said we are willing to play our part,

“Flexibility in the WA Domgas Policy enables producers to adjust their supply in response to market conditions. This is exactly what Woodside is doing.”

Woodside plans to begin production from its Scarbrough gas field in 2026 through an expanded Pluto gas plant.

Up to 225 terajoules a day of gas will flow to the WA market, although more than half will be consumed by the under-construction Perdaman urea plant.

Republished by permission from Boling Cold, original article here.

Gasbagging. News Corp steps up the hot air, ignores the gas facts

 

This post was originally published on Michael West.

It’s still well down on the Coalition under Scott Morrison but Labor’s coal and gas project approvals keep rising. Zacharias Szumer reports.

The Albanese government’s fossil fuel approval tally has risen to 16 after Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek approved four coal mine extensions on Thursday. 

Well, the Minister has insisted that they’re all extensions, but questions linger (more on that later). 

While at the time of writing only three extensions are visible on the EPBC portal, a press release sent around by Tanya Plibersek’s office said the government had approved four. 

Three are in Queensland – owned by the ASX-listed BHP and two private companies: Vitrinite and Jellinbah Group – and one in NSW majority-owned by Japan’s Idemitsu. 

https://infogram.com/december-2024-fossil-fuel-approvals-1h0r6rz3negel4e

The Australia Institute’s research director Rod Campbell said the release of the report just before Christmas was a “classic ‘taking out the trash’ tactic”.

A Plibersek press release stressed that “there are no new mines, they are all extensions of existing operations”. 

That’s been questioned by the ABC’s Michael Slezak, who has dug up evidence of Vitrinite describing the newly approved project, Vulcan South, as “a greenfield development” and made clear that an adjacent operational mine and Vulcan South were “independent projects” to be “executed separately”.

Plibersek told Auntie that “independent scientific experts and the minister’s department classify the project as an expansion”. 

As such, an X post made by the Minister yesterday sought to score a goal on what some might consider a minor semantic point. 

What a difference a decade makes. pic.twitter.com/eyNm6T1g0f

— Tanya Plibersek (@tanya_plibersek) December 19, 2024

It doesn’t really make a lot of difference to the climate whether the coal is mined from a new hole or an old one, such people would argue. 

The Minister also highlighted that projects would comply with Australia’s net zero commitments and climate safeguard laws – something that shouldn’t be difficult considering the coal will be burnt overseas and thus not count as Australian domestic emissions. 

Steely determination

The extensions are all for metallurgical coal used to make steel, for which Plibersek highlighted there was not yet any valid replacement.

So called met coal (metallurgical) is currently an essential part of how most steel is made, but its future mightn’t be as bright as some claim. 

Australia’s world-topping met coal exports could peak in around two years before permanently trending down as replacement technologies are phased in, a 2024 analysis by the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) claimed. 

“The accelerating steel technology transition means that coal can no longer be considered essential for steelmaking,” author Simon Nicholas wrote. 

Well, well. Taking out the trash.@tanya_plibersek just approved three coal mines big enough to swallow Sydney. @TheAusInstitute https://t.co/fQY47q0VUX pic.twitter.com/vOeHqrqnVd

— Roderick Campbell (@R_o_d_C) December 19, 2024

The real question is how long that switch will take. 

The industry clearly has fairly long-term plans. For instance, the three projects given the green light yesterday have approval periods running till 2053, 2062, 2088.

Koala-tree culling claims

In early October, Vitrinite was accused of illegally mining coal and destroying koala habitat without federal government approval at the adjacent Vulcan Mine.

At the time, the company denied the claims and Plibersek’s department said it was “making enquiries”. One of Plibersek’s staffers told MWM the investigation is ongoing. 

Vitrinite has previously been found to have breached both state and federal environmental laws at the site. 

 

Tanya Plibersek said that her government had “imposed 240 strict conditions across the projects to ensure the environment is protected”. 

In late September, MWM reported that the Albanese government had approved or extended at least twelve fossil fuel projects and two carbon capture projects since taking office.

MWM’s tally only includes extractive projects – not supporting infrastructure such as gas pipelines or railways for coal mines.

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Last week, News Corp ran a swathe of gas-industry-sponsored content across its tabloid front pages, but a new report has honed in on what it says are some of the facts the industry would rather keep quiet about. Zach Szumer reports.

Since Australia started exporting Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) in 2015, gas prices in eastern states have tripled while demand has dramatically dropped, according to a new report by The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). They say their findings are what the Murdoch papers don’t want to say about the gas industry.

On Monday last week, News Corp tabloids across the country simultaneously ran front-page stories warning Aussies of higher bills and blackouts unless domestic gas shortages were addressed. Fairly standard fare, as far as Murdoch rags go.

Readers didn’t discover until they’d flicked to the inside spread of this “special report” that this was all content sponsored by companies like Santos, Tamboran Resources and the China/Singapore owned pipeline group Jemena.

Santos and the mythical gas shortage. What’s the scam?

It was just the beginning of a week-long series explaining the critical importance of “stepping on the gas” – i.e. slashing red tape to expand gas production – “to head off a crisis that also threatens to drive jobs offshore and trash the transition to renewables.”

While the stories printed in the first day’s foldout didn’t shy away from mentioning the rising price of gas, there was no suggestion of any link between this, or any demand shortfalls, with the beginning of Australia’s gas exports in 2015.

This is a crucial omission, the authors of the IEEFA report say.

Gassed-up prices, slumping demand

IEEFA’s Australian gas finance analyst Kevin Morrison said the tripling of prices since exports began is

due to the stronger linkage between LNG export prices and domestic gas prices.

“Correspondingly, the largest gas use reductions came from the electricity and manufacturing sectors, which tend to be more price sensitive,” Morrison said, adding “Prices are likely to remain higher than pre-2015 levels for decades.”

Meanwhile, since peaking in 2013-2014, demand for gas in the eastern states has fallen by 32%, the report says.

Explosive FOIs – gas cartel conned Government, fixed high energy prices for all Australians

Over the same period, the amount of gas used in power generation more than halved from 11.5% to 5%, as the share of renewables almost quadrupled from 10.4% to 38.1%, the report found.

“Meanwhile, the evaporating gas demand has largely been absorbed by the gas industry itself, as 8-10% of the gas used to make LNG is consumed in the liquefaction process and in piping the source coal seam gas (CSG) hundreds of kilometres to LNG export facilities,” the report read.

Australia-wide, LNG production is now the largest user of gas, ahead of electricity generation and manufacturing.

IEEFA Australia chief executive Amandine Denis-Ryan highlighted that gas production in eastern Australia had risen 2.8 times since LNG exports began, “This means the increase in total east coast output has effectively been directed to the three Queensland LNG export plants, given the decline in domestic gas use.”

The News Corp papers did accurately report an ACCC report from July found that the East Coast could face potential gas shortages by 2027, but there are plenty of experts who don’t think the answer is to ‘step on the gas.’

However, you can almost set your watch by News Corp running editorials with headlines like ‘Drill Baby, Drill’ every time the ACCC or any energy market body makes even the slightest warning of potential shortages.

In the case of their latest round of insufficiently labelled advertorials, it’s clearly a case of he who pays the piper calls the tune.

Gas Lies – The West Report

This post was originally published on Michael West.

A prominent energy economics research body says the world’s largest carbon capture and storage project is capturing less than half of the emissions it claimed. Zach Szumer has the story.

Chevron’s much-heralded and world’s largest Gorgon Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS) project is storing less than half of the carbon it did four years ago, slipping far under rising targets, according to new data. It currently captures about 30% of the C02 it removed from its reservoir, new research from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEFFA) shows.

The Western Australian project was approved on the condition of capturing an average of 80 per cent per year of the C02 over five years.

Since it began injecting C02 in mid-2019, about three years behind schedule, it’s averaged 47 % per year.

IEFFA attributes the shortfall to issues related to reservoir pressure but says these technical challenges are not unique to the Gorgon project.

A 2022 IEFFA study of 13 CCS projects around the world found only three had achieved their targets.

The cost per tonne of C02 captured at Gorgon had risen from an estimated $70 to over $200, IEFFA says, mainly due to rising capital costs.

This could be bad news for Western Australia, which has just released plans for the state to become a “world leader” in CCS. Its action plan cites the Gorgon project as an example of how the state is tapping into a global trend and is poised to attract new CCS investment.

However, the issues at Gorgon “cast doubt on the financial viability” of CCS, IEEFA says. The research body estimates that CCS projects around the world currently store around 10 million tonnes of carbon, while emissions from coal, oil and gas hit a record high of 37.4 billion tonnes in 2023, the International Energy Agency estimated.

IEEFA says, “Investors and governments should consider the risks associated with CCS projects carefully before allocating funds to those projects.”

Questions for Santos

IEEFA made special mention of Santos’ Bayu-Undan project, off the coast of the Northern Territory, which it said was “much more complex” than Gorgon. C02 stored there has to travel through almost 800km of pipelines, while at Gorgon, it only faces a 7km journey.

Planning documents for storing carbon at Bayu-Undan are yet to be submitted but the company has said that it intends to formally approve the project in 2025 and begin pumping C02 into it in 2028.

In October, IEFFA demanded Santos demonstrate “how it will meet its targets given CCS’s history of underperformance, including at Chevron’s Gorgon project.”

Nordic Nah: independent report opens new fault lines in carbon capture and storage’s star projects

However, another Santos CCS project – Moomba in South Australia – started operating in October and is currently reducing the emissions of its adjacent gas plant by “more than 50 %,” according to a recent investor presentation. The pipeline at Moomba is 55km long.

The company is “extremely proud of the performance to date of the first phase of Moomba CCS”, Santos CEO Kevin Gallagher recently said.

Energy analyst Kevin Morrison – one of the authors of IEEFA’s Gorgon report – agreed, “It’s good Moomba has finally come on – Santos has been talking about this for over 15 years.”

“Let’s measure the C02 when the official statistics come out because there’s been all sorts of claims made about lots of the CCS projects around the world,

and when you dig into it, none of them really stack up”.

Morrison cited recent reports that suggest the much-heralded Sleipner CCS project in Norway has overestimated CCS storage by up to a third.

Both Chevron and Santos were contacted for comment but did not respond before deadline.

---

Editor: and by the way … we are subsidising 

Protesters v Carbon scammers | The West Report

This post was originally published on Michael West.

The Albanese government has now approved or extended at least twelve fossil fuel projects and two carbon capture projects since taking office. Zacharias Szumer updates the tally with three freshly announced approvals.

The Albanese government’s fossil fuel approval tally has risen to twelve after Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek approved three coal mine extensions on Tuesday.

The approvals are for Whitehaven’s Narrabri Underground Mine Stage 3 Extension Project in NSW’s northwest, and two in the Hunter Valley: MACH Energy’s Mount Pleasant Optimisation project and Yancoal’s Ravensworth Underground Mine.

The approvals will extend the operating life of these projects into the late 2050s and 2060s; however, in some cases, companies plan to, or have been ordered to, cease coal extraction earlier.

For instance, the Ravensworth project estimates that it will cease production by 2032, and the government’s approval of the Mount Pleasant Optimisation project said the company must “cease extraction by 22 December 2048.”

Australia Institute research director Rod Campbell said the approvals were “inconsistent with Australia’s climate goals.”

“To approve huge new coal mines while bidding to host the world’s major climate conference, COP31, is a slap in the face to our Pacific neighbours, who have clearly and repeatedly requested that Australia stop expanding fossil fuel production,” he said.

Time for Australia to be the friend the Pacific needs 

In June, MWM reported that the Albanese government had approved or extended at least nine fossil fuel projects and two carbon capture projects since taking office.

MWM’s tally only includes extractive projects – not supporting infrastructure such as gas pipelines or railways for coal mines.

Approvals slammed by Greens, praised by Nats

In a Sky News interview with Andrew Bolt, Nationals Senator Matt Canavan “welcome[d]” the approvals, adding that “it was a little bit late, but better late than never”.

Canavan said the companies had been “waiting with bated breath” for the approvals.

Whitehaven’s Narrabri extension project was first referred to the federal department in 2019, MACH’s Mount Pleasant project in 2020 and Yancoal’s Ravensworth project in 2022.

Plibersek said her government had made its decisions “in accordance with the facts and the national environmental law” and that it would “continue to consider each project on a case-by-case basis, under the law.”

She added that the projects’ emissions would be accounted for by “the government’s strong climate laws that were supported by the Greens political party and independents”, referring to the government’s Safeguard Mechanism.

However, Greens Spokesperson Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said the three approvals showed “the Albanese Government has zero credibility on the environment. The Labor Government is deliberately and proactively approving climate-wrecking coal mines under laws they know are broken. It’s wrong and irresponsible.”

Meanwhile, Campbell said:

The fact that these new coal mines can be approved, despite the government’s Safeguard Mechanism being in place, shows just how inadequate the policy is.

The Safeguard Mechanism only covers emissions released by mining and transporting exported coal to port, not when it’s burned to generate electricity or make steel, and the mechanism has been criticised for its heavy reliance on questionable carbon offsets.

Safeguard Mechanism is great … for big polluters and landowners, not so much for the planet

Economic benefits overestimated?

The NSW Department of Planning and Environment released an analysis of the Narrabri project in early 2020, which found “significant net economic benefit” of an estimated “$599 million” to the state, primarily from royalty and tax payments.

It said this figure, provided by consulting firm AnalytEcon, was “inclusive of estimated costs for environmental externalities and after internalisation of most environmental management costs by [Whitehaven].” However, an Australia Institute paper from 2022, authored by Campbell, said AnalytEcon’s methods “radically overstate the economic case for their client’s project.”

For one, it claimed that the project’s estimated tax payments were “100 times greater than the tax paid by the entire Whitehaven group from 2013-14 to 2019-20, and using “more realistic tax payments” meant the project’s net present value (NPV) would be zero.

It also said that the consultancy had taken “the approach that the whole world bears the cost of climate change equally, so their cost-benefit analysis focused on NSW only includes the very small portion of the climate damage that they calculate would be borne by NSW”.

Report claims super funds are lying to their members on climate risk

Over the last few years, a small community group represented by Environmental Justice has sought to force the government to consider wider climate impacts in its fossil-fuel project approval process.

The Federal Court rejected the challenge in September last year, saying it was a matter for parliament, and in August of this year, the High Court declined to hear an appeal.

Plibersek suggested in a recent interview that she might consider inserting a climate trigger into the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act – a key Greens’ demand – but Prime Minister Anthony Albanese quickly shot down the idea.

Whole Nine Yards: Albanese government fossil project tally rises to 9

 

This post was originally published on Michael West.

It’s sickening to think Australian governments would put the gas cartel and foreign citizens ahead of lower electricity for Australians. But as Rex Patrick reveals from the latest FOI documents, sadly, that’s what they have done.

In October 2022, nine months after Russia invaded Ukraine, then West Australian Premier Mark McGowan gave some unsolicited advice to the federal government on how to deal with surging gas and electricity prices. They should look to his state to find a solution, he told the ABC’s 730 Report. 

McGowan was primarily referring to the gas reservation policy that’s been in place in WA since 2006, whereby gas producers are forced to reserve 15% of the gas they produce for use in WA.

“I think there’s a pretty good model here in Western Australia,” Mr McGowan said.

“Industry didn’t like it at the time but now, it’s seen as a wonderful initiative and, across the board, it’s accepted by industry — both the oil and gas industry itself, but also other industries that are downstream users of it, particularly down here in Perth”.

High gas prices and the ADGSM

Gas sets the electricity price. So, a high gas price doesn’t just hurt industry, it affects every Australian household.

On the East Coast, it is supply availability that sets the price. This can be seen in the picture below, which paints a thousand words. In the early part of last decade, the East Coast gas prices (purple) were on par with the west (blue) and the US (yellow) – below $5/GJ. 

In 2015, as the gas cartel turned on the export gas trains in Gladstone, Queensland, the price started to rise. The prices on East Coast started to rise, peaking as export production rose to full capacity, in 2017 at $10/GJ (long term contract prices were up around $18/GJ).

That’s about the time that I, as an advisor to Senator Nick Xenophon, negotiated the Australian Domestic Gas Security Mechanism (ADGSM) with the Finance Minister, Senator Matthias Cormann. 

At the time the cartel were refusing to offer gas to some Australian businesses, no matter the prices they were willing to pay. The gas companies were determined to get gas offshore to their long-term foreign customers, and Australian consumers weren’t a priority.

The ADGSM allows the Resources Minister to stop gas exports if there is a projected shortfall in the East Coast market – in effect, it’s an emergency gas reservation policy.

After the introduction of the ADGSM, supply availability improved, but the cartel kept prices high by keeping a tight rein on supply.

Through all of this period the WA price remained below $5/GJ.

Asian gas absurdity

In early 2019, the price of East Coast gas rose above that of Australian gas in Asia. That was an incredible situation given that gas exported to Asia needs to be liquified and shipped.

In May 2019, the Morrison Government was re-elected and I found myself, as an independent senator for South Australia, in a strong ‘balance of power situation’ in the Senate.

I used that position to jump on a plane to WA to have a serious discussion with Cormann about the gas situation. We were joined by Resource Minister, Senator Matt Canavan.

Australia’s Most Wanted: Rex Patrick and the Senate’s new power-block

We talked through ways to deal with the problem. Cormann and Canavan agreed to conduct an early review into the operation of the ADGSM, with a view to factoring price (rather than just supply) into the mechanism. Cormann also agreed to explore an East Coast gas reservation policy.

Cormann close but no cigar

On 6 August 2019, the Morrison Government announced it would look into a gas reservation policy for the East Coast.

By October 2020, the Department of Industry, Science and Resources had prepared an issues paper and was calling for submissions from stakeholders. Over 40 submissions were received.

In October 2021, the Department completed its analysis, finalised an options paper, and advised then Resources Minister Kieth Pitt to recommend to the Prime Minister that a gas reservation scheme not be supported.

The Department’s options and analysis were secret and they have spent the last two years, and a great deal of taxpayers’ dollars shelled out to lawyers, to make sure the options paper did not see the light of day.

They were only partially successful in that objective.

Australia has censored the easy fix for electricity prices – Rex Patrick gets gas FOIs back

Condemned by their own words

The documents the Administrative Appeal Tribunal eventually ordered the Department to hand over reveal a trail of bureaucratic deceit and betrayal.

First, it is revealed that the Department acknowledged in the options paper that a domestic gas reservation policy was “a way to push to producers towards offering longer term, lower cost supply contracts. 

But they also observed that gas producers and exporters would not favour such a proposal. And they then proceeded to swallow the arguments of the gas cartel.

One of the fears the Department had was that a reservation policy would ultimately cause a lack of investment in gas exploration. Of course, the WA reservation scheme revealed that this was cartel ‘smoke and mirrors’ misinformation.

In the WA case, investment had gone up, not down.

Nothing to see in WA! Look at Peru!

Part of the argument created to support the cartel’s ongoing profits was a case study from Peru.

Although the options paper looked at gas reservation schemes from Indonesia, Israel, Malaysia, Qatar and the US, the Department was clearly heavily influenced by the views of the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA), an association that represents over 200 oil and gas explorers and producers. They proposed that Peru was the only LNG exporter with a domestic gas reservation scheme. The Department swallowed that hook sufficiently to endorse the idea in the paper.

Of course, the impression created by APPEA was one of doom and gloom in Peru. Even if they were right, the Department failed to appreciate that, unlike the 15% reservation commanded by WA and the 10% reservation likely to be used on the East Coast, Peru used 40%.

Of course, the Department just had to look to WA to see that, almost two decades after initiating a gas reservation policy, they still have consistently cheap gas.

Gas lobby fable upon fable

Offensively, almost as though they had not read their professional duties set out in the Public Service Act, the bureaucrats also advised the minister that, “Gas reservation acts as a tax on gas production, paid as a subsidy to domestic gas users”, as though their first priority wasn’t Australians.

Further argument against a reservation scheme was that price decreases would ultimately increase demand, and the price would eventually go up. Imagine that – growth in manufacturing! The Department saw that as a disadvantage.

Most significantly, the Department’s options paper argued against a domestic gas reservation policy on the grounds it would create energy security uncertainty for our trading partners (such as Japan, who have recently been caught out re-selling our gas – profiting at the expense of cheap electricity here in Australia).

Of course, putting Japan, South Korea and Japan ahead of Australians is also happening and has been explored extensively by MWM.

Climate Betrayal: how backroom deals with Japan locked Australia in for decades of gas

Australia Betrayed

We don’t know the full options for reducing gas and electricity prices. They have been kept secret because they might upset our international gas customers. 

What we know is that the Department did go along with the cartel. They recommended against a gas reservation policy.

They are wrong and Australians are suffering for their betrayal.

Sadly, the Department (now DCCEEW) is firmly in the pockets of the cartel and foreign interests.

How far entrenched in their pockets they are was revealed when they had a dig at the Australian Energy Market Operator suggesting that they had no role in forecasting gas supply to ensure Australians have energy; it’s only about investment.

Unfortunately, it’s the Department that serves as the foundation of advice to our political leaders – no matter which party is in government. With transparency strongly suppressed, the Department’s bias for the cartel when advising ministers, compromised by donations no matter their party, goes unchecked.

Give, and thou shalt receive. Million dollar links between donors and environmental approvals

A deliberate choice

The key point to understand here is that Australian Government bureaucrats, and Ministers in the Morrison and Albanese Governments have very deliberately decided that the interests of the gas cartel and their foreign customers, mainly big energy corporations in Japan and South Korea, sit ahead of Australian consumers.  

Cormann and Canavan were prepared to look at options, but their Prime Minister and the Coalition Government decided to put foreign interests first. They did so because they were in the thrall of the gas cartel and feared a corporate and diplomatic backlash.  

And that decision has been carried on by the Albanese Government with the Prime Minister and Resources Minister Madeleine King bending over backwards to reassure Japanese and Korean Governments, and corporate interests, that Australia won’t give any thought to limiting gas exports.  

Time and time again Albanese and King have repeated the mantra to the gas lobby, as well as audiences in Tokyo and Seoul, that Australia will always be “a reliable energy partner” – which is code for, “don’t worry, we’re going to put foreign interests first”.  

This is a deliberate policy and political choice that has been made and maintained by both the Coalition and Labor Governments. They’ve wanted to keep the nature of that choice hidden by so long obstructing the release of information, but at least some of the truth is now out in the light of day.

Premier McGowan had it right when he said, “Obviously, producers of gas in the east wouldn’t like [a gas reservation scheme], but Australian national interest and the people of Australia must come first”. Unfortunately, no-one in Canberra wants to listen to that sort of statement.

The Second British Invasion: how royal cronies and the gas debacle took Australia for billions

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Fossil fuel lobbyists are exploiting farmers in claims they need the diesel rebate, an $11 billion+ subsidy, to survive. Annemarie Jonson and Matt Pollard of CEF explain.

This month, an alliance led by peak fossil fuel lobbyists, the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) and Energy Producers Australia – formerly known as the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, chief mouthpiece of the methane gas cartel, released a report advocating for the retention of massive public subsidies for imported diesel, a high-emissions fossil fuel.

The report warns that reforms to reduce the current diesel subsidy, formally the Fuel Tax Credit (FTC) Scheme, would inflict severe damage on the economy, drive up grocery prices, and result in job losses across the country. Call it a shot across the bows to signal to the Federal government, ahead of MYEFO, a likely early Federal Budget and a looming election, that any attempt to touch this unconscionable handout will be met with hellfire and fury. We have seen this movie many times before.

First, it is important to note who is behind this special pleading. The MCA represents ~125 resources and fossil fuel firms, including the largest beneficiaries of fuel tax credits: BHP, Rio Tinto, and coal miners Glencore, Fortescue, Roy Hill, Yancoal Australia, Whitehaven Coal, Peabody Energy, and Anglo American. The coalition the MCA has cobbled together and called the Fuel Tax Credit Alliance also includes groups from the agriculture sector, such as farmers, handy human shields as it promulgates its disinformation campaign.

Largest fossil fuel subsidy

There is a lot at stake. Climate Energy Finance (CEF) found in our September 2023 FTC report that the Scheme is by far Australia’s largest fossil fuel subsidy, accounting for 88% of the $12.4bn of Federal budgetary assistance to the fossil fuel industry in 2021 and making Australia one of the G20’s largest providers of subsidies for fossil fuels.

The principal argument of the MCA Alliance’s report is that the fuel excise, a sales tax levied by the Federal Government on petrol and diesel at the pump, is designed to finance road maintenance and expenditure in Australia, and thus, consumers of fossil fuels for use ‘off-road’ use – i.e. resources companies and farmers running diesel based machinery and vehicles – should be exempt from paying a tax designed to upkeep roads. Accordingly, they argue, they should remain eligible for exemption under the FTC Scheme, receiving a credit from the government for the fuel tax paid to run their off-road vehicles.

We debunked this nonsense logic in our report.

Since 1992, the fuel excise has been a general revenue-raising tax mechanism, contributing to the broader federal budget. The Australian Government’s capital allocation to road infrastructure has been set independently of fuel excise revenue and expenditure on roads and has not followed movements in fuel taxation since the introduction of the Fuel Tax Act 2006, the current legislation under which the FTC Scheme operates.

The diesel tax is, in other words, wholly decoupled from road maintenance and is about contributing to public revenues across the board – something which the fossil fuel sector is notoriously reluctant to do. This is evidenced by their egregious record of tax dodging and borne out yet again by this latest threat that the industry should continue to enjoy government largesse unavailable to most of us – or else.

The Dirty Budget: fossil fuel subsidies up 31%. What’s the scam?

Secondly, the mining lobbyist report misleads when it puts the absurd argument that the FTC Scheme is not a fossil fuel subsidy. As CEF and the Australia Institute have noted, the World Trade Organisation, of which Australia is a member, determines that a subsidy exists when government revenue that is otherwise due is foregone or not collected via, for example, fiscal incentives such as tax credits. The OECD, International Energy Agency and other bodies all deem Australia’s FTC Scheme a fossil fuel subsidy.

Mining the primary beneficiary

Further, the FTC Scheme disproportionately benefits Australia’s largest mining companies, including coal majors. Australia’s mining industry accounted for 47% of all claims paid under the FTC Scheme in FY23 and is by far the biggest beneficiary.

Australia’s coal miners, specifically, receive more tax credits than the nation’s entire agriculture, forestry and fishing industries put together. Metal ore mining, predominantly iron ore, receives more tax concessions than the entire road transport, postage and warehousing industries combined.

Since FY07, the Federal Government has provided $103B in fuel tax concessions, of which, $45B has gone to Australia’s miners, primarily to coal and iron ore conglomerates.  This undermines the Alliance’s arguments that reforms to the FTC Scheme will wreak havoc on Australia’s agriculture, tourism and transport industries.

Capping the Fuel Tax Credit Scheme

The Federal Government forecasts that from FY24 to FY27, over $18B will be paid to mining under the FTC Scheme. Extrapolated out to FY30, this amounts to a cumulative $37B in tax concessions – something the community cannot afford and an opportunity cost Australians should no longer bear.

Near 70 years of this fossil fuel subsidy is long enough. The FTC regime is long overdue for substantial reform.

CEF has repeatedly called for the introduction of a cap so that each consolidated corporate group could claim no more than $50m in tax credits per annum. Under CEF’s model, only 8 firms would have been affected in FY23: large coal miners – Glencore, Peabody Energy, Yancoal and Anglo American – busily externalising the costs of the climate crisis onto ordinary Australians who do pay their share of fuel excise at the petrol pump, as well resources majors BHP, Rio Tinto, Fortescue, and Hancock Prospecting.

Not a single firm or entity operating in Australia’s agricultural sector or road transport/freight would be affected.

This puts paid to the MCA’s claims that reform would wreck our economy and exacerbate our cost-of-living crisis by driving grocery price inflation via skyrocketing transport input costs.

Problem solved. Further, in terms of its fiscal benefits,

the $50m pa cap we propose would result in a massive $14B in Budget savings to 2030.

Currently, the diesel rebate acts as a powerful headwind that disincentivises our economically dominant resources sector from reducing its dependence on diesel. Now, Imagine if the revenue currently foregone could be converted to a tailwind to speed the transition of the sector towards zero-emissions power sources, accelerating sector-wide decarbonisation.

Where’s Wally: find your favourite taxpayer subsidy to the fossil fuel giants

Tax revenue to be reinvested

CEF proposes that 100% of the revenue generated from the tax credit cap be reinvested back into the affected firms so they avoid a profitability hit if they accelerate funding to electrify mining transport and build out renewable energy and storage capacity and electricity infrastructure.

This transformation is urgently needed to enable miners – particularly of iron ore, in which we lead the world as the #1 exporter – to deploy zero-emissions power in their mining and processing.

In fact, this is the critical key that will unlock our potential to export “embodied decarbonisation” and lead the globe in the production of green metals and energy transition minerals, predominantly green iron. It is CEF’s assessment that this is Australia’s preeminent future-facing export opportunity.

Global trade is increasingly impacted by protectionist policies, including massive subsidies to transition domestic electricity markets and industry funding to capture the processing of critical mineral and strategic metals onshore, as well as the growing implementation of carbon pricing and carbon border adjustment mechanisms.

The price for unprocessed iron ore, Australia’s cash cow, is weakening precipitously. Meanwhile, climate change is accelerating. Only this week, iron ore giant BHP reported on its “…advocacy [within industry association memberships] on government climate policy consistent with the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement”. The MCA appears not to have received the memo from its biggest member on the necessity of aligning its lobbying with the global race to cut emissions.

If Australia is to remain competitive, we must pivot, electrify, and decarbonise our industries at speed and at scale. This requires us to decouple our climate and energy policies and funding from the influence of multinational fossil fuel cartels represented by the likes of the MCA, now demanding to retain its privilege and renew its licence to pollute and destroy.

The urgent reforms to the FTC that we propose would be a win-win-win for the environment, for our energy security and terms of trade, and for a future made in Australia.

Fossil fuel exports mean Australia’s carbon footprint is not getting smaller

This post was originally published on Michael West.

The Labor Government continues to approve new fossil fuel projects and subsidise others. A new report shows that by 2035, Australia’s global carbon footprint from fossil fuels will be about the same as it is today. Kim Wingerei with the story.

The Climate Analytics (CA) report published this week confirms that Australia has one of the world’s highest total per capita emissions for all greenhouse gases, double that of China and nine times bigger than India.

Australia emitted 1.7 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO₂e) per year in 2023 and will continue to emit a similar amount every year until 2035, when the annual emission is expected to be 1.5 GtCO₂e.

The main culprit is our fossil fuel exports. Fossil fuel burnt in Australia is responsible for ‘only’ 1% of global CO₂ emissions, but taking fossil fuel export into account,

Australia contributed 4.5% of global of fossil fuel emissions in 2022.

Not good for a country with just over 0.3% of the world’s population. But much more concerning is that it is not changing any time soon, despite our lofty commitment to net zero by 2050.

Fossil fuel production

According to the CA report, Close to 80% of Australia’s total fossil fuel CO2 footprint in 2022 was due to exported carbon. Australia is the third largest fossil fuel exporter in the world, after Russia and the US. In terms of total greenhouse gas footprint, Australia ranks second, however, due to our love of emission-intensive coal.

Australia accounted for just over half of global metallurgical (coking) coal exports at 52%, and 17% of global thermal coal exports.

It’s a similar story with gas (LNG), where our capacity for export has grown from 25.5 million tonnes per annum in 2012 to 62 million tonnes per annum by 2022, all due to new projects being approved by the previous government. That, at last, is abating, with the only new LNG project approved over the last couple of years being Tamboran in the Northern Territory.

However, already approved fracking projects continue to be allowed to expand, with the approval of new wells – 151 in Queensland alone. And since being elected in May 2022, the Albanese government has approved or extended nine new fossil fuel projects, not counting infrastructure such as gas pipelines.

Whole Nine Yards: Albanese government fossil project tally rises to 9

These approvals are all in direct contravention of the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) roadmap, which calls for a reduction in fossil fuel use by between 18 and 22% by 2030, and by 47 – 35% by 2035.

Climate Analytics estimate that by 2035 Australia’s export of fossil fuel

will add another 15 billion tonnes of CO₂ to the world’s total emissions.

Exporting global warming

To achieve the by now illusory objective of minimising global temperature increase to 1.5%, “Indicators of Global Climate Change 2023,” has estimated that the world has a total ‘budget’ of 200 GtCO2e between now and 2035. Australia’s projected fossil fuel exports from 2024 to 2035 would consume around 7.5% of that and around 9.1% when including Australia’s domestic carbon burning.

The catch, of course, is that exports are not counted as part of ‘our’ footprint. What is, however, is the significant amount of fossil fuel used to power the liquefaction process required to create LNG for export. When excluding the oil & gas industry’s own use of fossil gas, domestic consumption is just 19% of the gas Australia produces.

In other words, reduced fossil fuel exports would also help reduce our domestic carbon footprint.

At the moment, the only types of carbon emissions that are abating in Australia are land use, changes in land use and forestry (LULUCF), masking the fact that emissions from other sectors remain largely unaffected.

Australia falling behind

While China’s emissions may have already peaked, and Germany, Norway and the UK are projected to reduce their fossil fuel exports in 2030, Australia not only remains among the top 15 fossil-based CO₂ emitters per capita, but it has increased its emissions since 1990 by over 140%, one of only six of the 38 countries in the OECD to have done so.

 

The Other Budget: Labor staring down the barrel of a climate deficit

 

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Electricity prices are among the greatest costs facing Australians. Electricity prices are set by the gas price. The gas price is set by the gas cartel, and the Government is doing nothing about it – even censoring discussion on remedies. Rex Patrick reports.

Solution to the gas price clear, but kept hidden

There are cost-of-living solutions available, but Australians are not permitted to see them because, as was argued in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal by the Albanese Labor Government, those policies might have an economic impact on Japan, Korea and Singapore.

This is censorship of a most unusual and shameful kind. It is the kind of censorship which puts the interests of foreign governments against ordinary Australians struggling during the cost of living crisis.

Gas Reservation

Just after the 2019 election, I flew across to Western Australia and spent much of the day with the Finance Minister Mathias Cormann. In his home state there is a gas reservation policy that reserves 15% of gas produced in the state for Western Australian businesses and households. Western Australians pay far less than people in the eastern states because of this policy.

My trip to WA was successful. Cormann and Resources Minister Matt Canavan agreed to pursue a prospective national gas reservation policy. It was a start!

The Government formally announced its intention to consider a prospective national gas reservation policy on August 5, 2019.

They set about preparing an issue paper, which they completed in October 2020, and then set about engaging the industry. Submissions were received, and an options paper was sent to the Minister for Resources in November 2021.

The report was never actioned on account of COVID and a re-focussing of policy by then Prime Minister Scott Morrison on what he called a “gas-fired recovery”. 

The paper, with an array of options for a gas reservation scheme, was buried.

No options allowed – or seen

I don’t like to see policy proposals euthanised without debate. I like open discussion, especially when it might involve consideration of ideas that might help reduce cost pressures on Australian households and Australian industry. 

I sought to exhume the options paper and applied for access under our national Freedom of Information law.

It quickly became clear the Albanese Government wanted it kept under wraps.

At the start they denied access to everything. Not one page, not one paragraph, not one word was to be released to me or the Australian public.  

At that point most FOI applicants give up, but I put $1,121 cash on the barrelhead to take the matter to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

Secret proceedings

In accordance with standard operating practices, as soon as I got the FOI into the AAT, the government relented and gave me half the document – but they were determined to deny access to the most significant information – the various gas policy options identified.  

I battled on with the matter going to a two-day hearing. The Government was represented by a brace of taxpayer-funded lawyers. I was self-represented.  Giving evidence were two officials, Mr Jeremenko of the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, and Mr Hauck of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

A significant part of Mr Hauck’s evidence was kept secret – given in a classified affidavit and a last minute secret session from which I was excluded.

The Tribunal was not accepting of Mr Jeremenko’s evidence and has ordered the Government to release more information to me. 

But the Tribunal did accept Mr Hauck’s opinion that the release of the information would be harmful to our international relations; and his secret evidence was accepted too. 

This is in spite of Prime Minister Albanese’s repeated statements, and the similar claims of other ministers, that Australia’s relations with Japan and other Asian energy partners have “never been stronger”.

Privately, however, DFAT appears to have persuaded the Tribunal that those same relationships are so sensitive that disclosure of an unimplemented policy options paper of a former government would cause the diplomatic sky to fall in.

Thanks to the anti-disclosure stance of the Albanese Government and DFAT’s secret testimony in support of that, Australians will not be allowed to see domestic gas policy options developed by our government’s energy experts – paid for, one might add, by you, the taxpayer. 

The next chance to see this document will likely not be until 2042, eighteen years away, when it becomes subject to the National Archives Act. 

Free debate in this country about our energy resources and policy options is being censored in the interest of keeping the Japanese, South Korean and Singaporean Governments and energy giants in those countries happy.

It’s a disgraceful state of affairs.

Mugs away

Other information – ministerial submissions and briefings revealed through FOI – has already shown that the Albanese Government has succumbed to pressure from Japan to ensure they have a long-term supply of gas on highly favourable terms. This is despite the Labor Party promising to both deal with climate change and ensure that Australian energy consumers were given a fair deal.

The Labor Party misled their constituent base in order to obtain power.

Climate Betrayal: how backroom deals with Japan locked Australia in for decades of gas

To make matters worse, it’s also been revealed that Japan has been taking so much of our gas on such generous terms that they’re on-selling some of our gas at a profit.

The value sequence goes like this. Large corporations, many of them with substantial Japanese shareholdings, extract our gas and export it to Asia. Australians receive very little in the way of royalties. Excess gas in Japan is sold off to their overseas markets.

Meanwhile, at home, we pay extraordinary prices for our own gas, with the gas cartel keeping supply tight to maximise its export opportunities. There have been times when the price of Australian gas in Japan, after liquification and shipping, was cheaper in price than the price of Australian gas in Australia.

Whilst the Albanese Government did bring in a $12 per/gigajoule price cap when the Ukraine war caused significant price rises on the East Coast (remember, WA prices always sit low because of their gas reservation scheme), the cartel was quietly smiling, knowing that any government that was trying to do the right thing by its citizens would have set the cap at $7 per gigajoule (still more expensive than what Western Australian’s pay).

It’s a trap: mooted gas cap plays into the hands of the cartel, locks in high energy prices

Domestic policy debate? No

The latest act by the government just rubs salt into the gas-fired wound.

To be clear, the document that I was seeking was a domestic policy options paper. The effect of the government’s successful claim in the AAT is that Australians are not allowed to engage in domestic policy debate because it might offend the Japanese.

As Australians struggle to pay rent and buy groceries, our government is denying informed debate on a major cost-of-living remedy.

Wicked is a word that springs to mind.

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Electricity prices were forecast to drop this month but now regulators are tipping higher-for-longer and blaming a ‘cold snap’. It would be nice to have an independent regulator, report Kim Wingerei and Michael West.

What’s the scam with electricity prices? They were forecast to drop by this month in line with falling wholesale prices, but now the regulators are talking about how they will be higher for longer thanks to the ‘cold snap’.

Three months ago, around the time energy experts were tipping wholesale electricity prices would peak in July this month, then be followed by relief for beleaguered consumers from the punishment of three years of nosebleed energy bills, we discovered the apparently bizarre gas forecasts published by AEMO (chart below).

The price of gas is key to the price of electricity. And high gas prices have crushed the consumption of gas, yet government and industry forecasters claim gas use will triple over the next 20 years.

If privatisation of gas and electricity networks and the consequent complexity of the market are partly to blame, it is worth pondering whether a more independent regulator might be in order. We are talking about the Australian Energy Market Operator (AMEO), which independent energy expert Tim Buckley described this week as “captured by the methane gas cartel”.

Buckley, who runs Climate Energy Finance analysis group, had been debating this very point with with other industry experts at the Smart Energy Council conference in Sydney.

Indeed MWM and analyst Bruce Robertson have been criticising – correctly in retrospect – the foreign controlled gas cartel for the past decade in literally dozens of stories.

How fake gas frights and fanciful forecasts keep fossil fuels burning for longer

It is always a good starting place to look at who owns what, and AEMO is no exception. AEMO is a public company limited by guarantee, of which 40% of the members are from the energy industry and 60% from government; and the board of directors of AEMO is stacked with fossil fuel executives.

So, the input from the industry is certainly there, if not blatantly dominant. Why else would they be forecasting the use of gas to triple if not for advice from the likes of Woodside, Shell, Chevron, Origin and Exxon?

Too many call for royal commissions too often but in this case, surely given the price of energy is so key to Australia’s economic future and social wellbeing – and given the cartel dominance of foreign controlled fossil fuel producers in the gas sector, indeed in transmission too – a robust independent judicial inquiry is in order. It would like save the country a lot of money. And then there’s the planet, of course.

Jobs and Hope – the election slogan I’d love to hear

As Buckley pointed out in a LinkedIn post, the constant cries of “gas shortages even as East Australia produces five times the amount of gas we use domestically” are absurd. “Gas demand continues to decline in Australia because consumers and industry can’t afford to keep being gouged with prices five times the US domestic methane price.”

He referred to the executive appointment to the key AEMO Services role seven months ago. Although he said NSW desperately needed an electrification of everything expert, a disruptor with strong knowledge of AI and technology, instead we got an APA Group stalwart, Nevenka Codevelle.

Disruptive thinking and speed of decarbonisation is not going to be achieved if we continue to rely on the fossil fuel industry for the training of our future leaders.

APA group controls Australia’s gas pipelines or transmission sector in a duopoly with Singapore’s Jemana. And further to this thesis of captured regulators, the evidence is strong that the energy markets rules-setter Australian Energy Regulator (AER) is also captive to the gas industry. This is evidence in this coverage of the NT’s ‘white elephant’ pipeline lobbed on the public at great taxpayer expense.

Gas Pipeline with No Gas – Chinese and Singapore tax dodgers leave the public with elephantine bill

Gas transmission, like distribution and export parity pricing and the cartel of producers, is a problem.

The nuclear debate, believed by many political observers to be a Coalition tactical distraction to keep coal and gas burning for longer has been disruptive to the roll-out of solar and wind projects. Markets like certainty.

“We hear lots of excuses and numbers of new planning system approvals for NSW projects of State Significance, but the proof is in the pudding – we are simply not getting anywhere near the number of wind and solar projects approved and then to final investment decision and construction that we need. The best way to get energy prices down permanently in NSW and to stop the constant stream of coal subsidies is to commission new replacement capacity ahead of end-of-life unreliable coal clunker closures,” says Buckley.

The trick might be for NSW Premier Chris Minns to fix the planning department and shift away from the fossil fuel mindset. Federally says Buckley, Energy Minister Bowen ought to review the ownership structure of AEMO and “move to 100% public funding to focus on the Australian consumer and to align with our climate and energy security objectives”.

The incumbent fossil fuel industry is a problem, and delay merely plays into the hands of the fossil fuel types who hold so much sway over our regulators. As the two major parties receive a lot of funding from the fossil fuel sector and are therefore timid when it comes to policing the sector, a royal commission may just give them the bullets they need to go into battle for lower electricity prices.

The Ultimate Gouge: why Australia, the world’s #1 exporter, now imports gas

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Spearheaded by the IPA, Murdoch media and Trump cheerleader Tucker Carlson the far-right is keeping the culture wars over fossil fuels and energy raging. Michael West reports on the latest tactics.

Emboldened by a report from pro-coal right-wing think tank the Institute of Public Affairs, the Murdoch media is now claiming bizarrely that renewable energy “is likely to be 5 or 6 times as expensive as what we had (coal).

This, hard on the heels of Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s first 6GW tender which was 7 times oversubscribed with 40GW of investor proposals. This after a decade of irrefutable evidence that the cost of building new solar and wind energy is cheaper than the cost of building new coal capacity.

In fact, the plunge in the price of building new renewable energy, which became cheaper than new coal almost 10 years ago, has surprised even RE’s most ardent advocates. The IPA, which somehow enjoys charity status, claims that it advocates for capitalism and free markets.

Yet, while the Labor Party and Chris Bowen are busy ‘crowding in’ enthusiastic private investors into their renewable energy tenders, the IPA is spruiking nuclear power, and that the taxpayers pick up the bill via its recent report, There is a Respectable Economic Argument for Nationalised Nuclear.

Inflation, what’s that?

The IPA analysis on energy also fails to grasp that the reason electricity prices are so high is inflation and the failure of successive governments to bring in a Domestic Gas Reservation Policy. 

How fake gas frights and fanciful forecasts keep fossil fuels burning for longer

“The Institute of Public Affairs clap-trap from Stephen Wilson about the coincidence of higher

share in the NEM and higher electricity prices when we all know it is due to hyperinflation of fossil fuel prices,” says independent energy analyst Tim Buckley of Climate Energy Finance.

“It is critical that Australians realise the number one reason for the hyperinflation of domestic energy prices is the hyperinflation of fossil fuel commodity prices. Methane gas prices in Australia (& LNG prices globally) rose 1,000% in 2022. 

Asian traded thermal prices, and the coal price Origin Energy pays to keep the largest taxpayer subsidised coal-fired power plant in Australia open at Eraring, saw their commodity prices rise 1,000% in 2023. Oil prices trebled in 2022.”

“This wasn’t due to a massive change in energy demand, it was the global geopolitical implications of sanctions against Russia due to their invasion of Ukraine, the number 2 fossil fuel exporter globally. Fossil fuel reliance massively undermined EU energy security.”

These basic facts appear to have eluded the IPA and the News Corp media. At stake is the energy transition, the global shift from fossil fuels to renewables; a shift made even more urgent in light of the record temperatures and the threat to climate. 

Australia though, thanks to its media, remains mired in cultural war over climate change and energy which has undermined the transition to cheaper and cleaner energy for more than a decade.

Fossils in Arms: solar project slammed as white elephant, really a raging success

Regulatory and media capture … and Tucker 

“We have total regulatory capture by the fossil fuel mafia that has seen Australian domestic energy users paying export price parity and beyond, even as Australia is the number 3 fossil fuel exporter globally,” says Buckley.

And it makes no sense economically either as the government collects little in the way of royalties or taxes from the likes of Exxon, Chevron, Shell and others.

“The international gas cartel extracting monopoly rents from Australian consumers and businesses needs to be brought to heel,” says Buckley.

Meanwhile, far right-wing media personality Tucker Carlson has been revving up audiences across Australia about the ‘tyranny’ of the Labor government which he claims has deliberately defrauded its citizens by pushing for renewables. Coal, he claimed incredibly, is cheaper than solar and wind energy.

Tucker was invited to Australia by mining billionaire Clive Palmer to address the Australian Freedom Conference. Palmer has large coal assets.

Stepping on the gas

This when gas prices have only just eased back from their highs of $28GJ last week. The price of gas determines the price of electricity and the price of gas is determined by exporters of the gas cartel (export parity pricing)

“High energy prices,” says Buckley, “Willl only be solved by deploying significant more firmed renewable energy capacities. And V2G (vehicle to grid). And CER (consumer energy resources), VPPs (virtual power plants) and orchestration. 

“And changing consumer behaviour by an effective and appropriate Time of Day tariff to time-shift consumer use to when it is predictably sunny i.e. 10am to 4pm each and every day, when wholesale power prices are regularly negative.”

The IPA, says Buckley, should have its charity status revoked. Indeed it appears, rather than an espouser of free markets, to be merely a promoter for the fossil fuel industry and the bizarre energy policies of the Liberal and National parties.

In reality, they probably don’t believe it either but any sophistry which can keep the ‘debate’ going, the culture wars going, for longer definitely suits the interests of coal and gas producers.  

Race of the Century: Australia is in the box seat on climate and finance, here is the blueprint for victory

This post was originally published on Michael West.

The Albanese government has now approved or extended at least nine fossil fuel projects and two carbon capture projects since taking office. Zacharias Szumer updates MWM’s tally with a freshly announced project. 

The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water has approved the operation of 151 coal seam gas wells in Queensland. 

The approval of the Atlas Stage 3 Gas Project, published via the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Portal on Tuesday, grants Senex Energy a license to operate the project until 2080.

The expansion of Senex’s existing Atlas gas developments was first referred to the minister for environment and water in late 2022.

Around that time, Senex – which is controlled by Korean steel company Posco and partly owned by Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting – said it planned to increase its annual production to 60 petajoules (PJ) per year – more than 10 per cent of annual east coast gas demand. 

In the last few years, steel giant BlueScope, manufacturers Visy and Orora and energy retailer AGL have inked deals to buy gas produced by the Atlas gas expansion, on the presumption that it was granted approval. 

The full text of the approval grants Senex permission: 

To develop, operate, decommission and rehabilitate up to 151 coal seam gas wells and supporting infrastructure, including gas and water gathering systems, access tracks, brine and produced water storages, borrow pits, and ancillary supporting facilities, south-west of Wandoan, Queensland.

The approval also came with certain conditions, such as a ban on Senex clearing any Koala foraging and breeding habitat or releasing any CSG produced water to the surface water. 

In September last year, Michael West Media reported that the Albanese government had approved or extended eight fossil fuel projects and two carbon capture projects since taking office.

This list only counts extractive projects themselves, not supporting infrastructure such as gas pipelines. 

Research director at The Australia Institute Rod Campbell said, “More fossil fuel is the last thing the climate needs and more gas for a tax-shy billionaire-backed company is the last thing the Australian economy needs,” said Rod Campbell, Research Director at The Australia Institute.

“While all attention is on the LNP’s nuclear charade, Minister Plibersek is approving new fossil fuels. It’s appalling from a government that promised climate action.”

Bring our yer Dead! Amid nuke hype Tanya Plibersek approves Gina Rinehart’s gas pipeline

This post was originally published on Michael West.

While Australia goes crazy over the Coalition’s nuclear hype, the Federal Environment Department, led by Minister Tanya Plibersek, has just approved a new gas pipeline in Queensland. Rod Campbell reports.

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek has just approved a new coal seam gas pipeline in Queensland. The proposal comes from Senex, which is owned by Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting and Korean energy company Posco.

Gina is, of course, one of Australia’s favourite art critics and readers might remember Posco from controversies like the Hume Coal Project.

Senex’s Atlas to Reedy Creek Pipeline in Queensland aims to ‘service’ new coal seam gas projects out to the year 2064. These include the Atlas Coal Seam Gas (CSG) Project and the Atlas Stage 3 Gas Project, as well as ‘future Senex projects and other third party projects.’ 

Gas Pipeline with No Gas – Chinese and Singapore tax dodgers leave the public with elephantine bill

Senex’s new Atlas gas projects aim to develop up to 113 and 151 new wells respectively. The Atlas CSG project already has the green light – the Environment Department decided it didn’t need to assess the proposal in 2019. 

For reasons that aren’t clear, again

For reasons that aren’t clear, the Atlas Stage 3 project does need Federal approval and the Department completed its Final Recommendation report at the end of April. 

It must be somewhere on Minister Plibersek’s desk, so expect a decision any day now. Be particularly on the lookout if the Minister starts hugging koalas. 

But – spoiler alert – it’s hard to see how it could be anything but an approval. The neighbouring project has been approved, the pipeline has been approved and the Minister recently won a court case enabling her to ignore climate change when assessing coal and gas projects.

Fossil approvals on the rise

The Federal Government has shown no inclination to end new fossil fuel approvals, even though this is what climate action requires. On the contrary, its stated policy is to promote gas expansion through its Future Gas Strategy. 

The Future Gas Strategy mentions ‘tax’ precisely zero times and it will shock no one to discover that Senex has not paid tax in any year that the ATO provides data for, despite reporting $1.2 billion in revenue.

The gas industry is leeching off Australia’s resources, environment and taxpayers. Unfortunately, Minister Plibersek doesn’t seem to be reaching for the salt to rid us of these blood suckers.

One billion litres of water, but Plibersek told not to care. What’s the fracking scam?

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Peter Dutton’s Coalition is abandoning Australia’s climate targets while new FOI data show Labor’s fossil fuel commitments are spin. Rex Patrick explains.

Failure on Both Sides

As the saying goes, ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there’. And that’s the problem with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s announcement that the Coalition is abandoning Australia’s 2030 emissions targets.

Leaders set a direction and then guide the team there. Having an aim to point to keeps the team focussed and allows performance to be assessed against stated ambition. In this regard, Dutton’s announcement represents failure before the journey even starts.

But is Labor any better? Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has set a direction, but is doing everything not to land the goal.

We have Dutton steering a rudderless ship and Albanese at the helm of the ‘MV Disingenuous’.

Climate relief

In the week starting January 29, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen was out-and-about making climate action announcements,

The first, from Townsville on the Tuesday, was the announcement of a $70 million investment into a facility to produce 800 tonnes of green hydrogen per year to fuel over 40 heavy vehicles, ramping up to 3,000 tonnes for domestic supply, and ultimately in excess of 150,000 tonnes for export.

His second announcement, from Port Kembla on the Wednesday, was $137 million towards relining and upgrading a Blast Furnace at the local Steelworks with emission reduction technologies, and $63 million towards the purchase and commissioning of a low carbon electric arc furnace to replace the existing traditional blast furnace at the Whyalla Steelworks.

By Sunday he was announcing new vehicle efficiency standards for Australia.

Meanwhile in Japan

While Bowen was out there creating the impression Labor was serious about addressing climate change, a new FOI release reveals Resource Minister Madeleine King was in north Asia mixing with the who’s who of the gas and energy Industry in Tokyo and Seoul, advertising ‘Australia’s open for fossil fuel business’.

Bankers, gas production company’s and gas consumers all had diary slots assigned.

On the Monday, King attended a lunch event with Japan-Australia Business Co-operation Committee. In attendance was the Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC), a Japanese government-affiliated organisation involved in securing a stable supply of natural resources for Japan; J-Power, one of Japan’s leading electric utility companies; and gas giant INPEX, Japan’s largest oil and gas exploration and production company, and lead proponent in one of the largest offshore gas fields in Australia.

Talking points prepared for her left little doubt in her audience’s mind as to where the Albanese Government stood on gas.

Having delivered an ‘open for business’ message she moved on to a cosy afternoon with one-on-ones with Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) and, again, JOGMEC where she re-enforced the message.

“We are committed to ongoing consultation with Japan on our energy policies and to provide investor certainty”. She then talked up Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology, pointing out recent changes to the Sea Dumping Act which will permit the import and undersea capturing of foreign CO2 emission (should CCS one day work).

Her final meeting of the day was a half an hour meet-and-greet with the Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, Saito Ken. Similar messaging was adopted.

Kamikaze Gas Rounds

The next day, Tuesday, the Minister held a number of bilateral meetings with Japanese energy power houses.

First trading and investment company, Mitsui & Co, then LNG Japan Corporation and its partners, followed by INPEX.

In relation to gas, and despite its CO2 emission profile, King acknowledged that “Australian LNG will be an important energy source to support Japan’s energy security and assist you to decarbonise your economy.”

Next in her diary was one of Japan’s largest natural gas utilities, Tokyo Gas Co, where she assured the company, “I’m grateful for the continued interest you have in potential projects in Australia”. Mitsubishi Corporation was the last company to have a private exchange with King that day.

She finished up the day with a 25-minute interview with the Australian Financial Review to ensure Labor’s enthusiasm for gas investment went to the right audience and wouldn’t be seen by many in the wrong audience.

On Wednesday morning she met with JERA, a joint venture between Tokyo Electric Power Company and Chubu Electric Power Company and one of the world’s largest buyers of LNG, before finally fleeing to the airport.

Korean switch

Minister King then paid a visit to the Republic of Korea where the meeting line-ups focussed more on iron ore, steel, lithium and zinc. 

But gas was not to miss out with time set aside for a private discussion with KoGas, the state-owned natural gas company primarily involved in the import, distribution, and sale of natural gas, and then SK E&S, an energy and chemical company with interest in Australia’s LNG.

Unsurprisingly, she also met with Korea’s Minister for Trade, Industry and Energy, Ahn Duk-geun. More gas positive messaging flowed. 

“Our government continues to provide a stable investment environment for gas explorers and producers.” She went on to reassure the Korean Minister that the Australian Government’s regulatory settings were there to ensure adequate gas supply domestically while meeting energy supply commitments to international partners, including the ROK.”

Labor’s gas strategy

The International Energy Agency (IEA) forcefully states that the pathway to net zero by 2050 is a narrow one and requires no new oil and gas fields approval.

Yet the Labor government hasn’t taken heed of the IEA’s edict. Since coming to power, they’ve approved a number of fossil fuel projects.

Ten and rising: Albanese government new fossil fuel approvals unveiled

 

The minister’s visit to Japan and Korea shows that Labor’s appetite to support gas projects hasn’t abated.

When the Government released its Future Gas Strategy in May (cherry picking only some of the IEA’s material), the stock market reacted with gas stocks rising.

Duopoly politics

In some sense, purporting to act on climate change, and then not acting, is worse than promising to do nothing. They both achieve the same non-outcome, but the former is dishonest.

And that leads us back to the start. Neither of the two major political parties are walking-the-walk on climate action. 

The Coalition are pressing for far distant and expensive nuclear power stations, citing their use in other jurisdictions (jurisdictions without the sun or space for renewables that Australia has). Their breaking of 2030 commitment simply allows them to draw attention on a ‘need’ for nuclear to ‘rescue’ Australia from a climate emergency.

Meanwhile Labor is talking-the-talk and standing still.

It’s no wonder a large portion of the community have lost faith in the both of them.

Climate Betrayal: how backroom deals with Japan locked Australia in for decades of gas

This post was originally published on Michael West.

The latest data on emissions is not good. The annual climate update was buried by other news, notably the climate damaging Future Gas Strategy. David McEwen reports. 

Amid a frankly depressing set of data releases and announcements last week – for those concerned with the health of the planet – one slipped through completely unremarked except by a few climate scientists on social media. It was the pre-print of the annual climate update published in the journal Earth System Science Data. 

Among other sobering stats, it included this mic drop: the available global carbon budget for a 50% likelihood – yes, that’s a coin toss – of remaining within 1.5 degrees of global heating was about 150 billion tonnes at the start of 2024.

We’re currently burning our way through on average about 40 billion tonnes a year. 

Wait, what? Haven’t we been told that we need to roughly halve global emissions by 2030 and achieve net zero by mid century for the same chance of staying within 1.5 degrees?

Well, yes, but things have changed. For one thing, we’ve continued to increase emissions since that target came out over 5 years ago. And for another, the actual climate indicators – including observed heating and the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases – are worse than expected at this point in the game. So the remaining safe carbon budget has been revised down.

Urgent global action required

In the absence of radical global action, we will have blown our chances of 1.5 degrees within a handful of years; well before 2030. And global action must start at home, because despite what some say, Australia’s actions matter.

We’re a G20 economy with massive per capita historic and current emissions. We are a massive exporter of fossil emissions, while offshore processing of our other minerals sees us having influence over nearly 10% of global emissions in all.

Meanwhile Australia is highly exposed to the impacts of climate change, the costs of which will adversely affect our economy. We also have unparalleled resources to decarbonise our economy. It’s up to us to lead the world.

I hasten to stress that passing thresholds does not imply imminent demise. But it does continue to make the weather more volatile, significantly increasing the prospects of long tail events such as a global famine, while hastening the onset of calamitous natural tipping points.

Truly grim reading: How key climate indicators have changed since IPCC AR6 WGI in 2021

🌡️Decadal warming at 1.19C, up from 1.09C
🛰️CO2 at 419ppm, up from 410ppm
🏭Emissions at 54GtCO2e, up from 53
📉Remaining carbon budget 150Gt, down from 500https://t.co/U58wYZYvQb pic.twitter.com/mlOf1C5L9x

— Simon Evans (@DrSimEvans) May 9, 2024

Values and choices

Julia Gillard once remarked, “Budgets are about choices, Fran, and you show what you value by the choices you make.” With the Federal budget looming, it reminds me that the government persists in using the comforting but flat-out erroneous framing of its emissions reduction target “43% off 2005 levels by 2030.”

If you read the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water’s fine print, you’ll see that there is an underlying carbon budget attached to that target – some 4.4 billion tonnes for the decade 2021-2030. 

That budget has absolutely nothing to do with science. It’s simply based on working from where we were in 2021 (allegedly 0.465 billion tonnes for the financial year to June 2021 based on the latest greenhouse accounts) and assuming modest annual reductions on the way to the government’s politically calculated target of 43% by 2030, which will work out to about 0.351 billion tonnes emitted in 2030 compared with the 0.616 billion recorded in the reference year of FY2005. 

Climate pollution blankets

Why are carbon budgets important? Because emissions are cumulative, remaining in the atmosphere typically between hundreds and thousands of years depending on the particular type of greenhouse gas.

To put it another way, every year, we’re adding another blanket of heat trapping climate pollution, and most of the blankets stay on the bed for a century or more. The blankets don’t start to come off as emissions decline; only after we reach global net zero. 

(The notable exception is methane – the main ingredient in “natural” gas, which breaks down in one to two decades. Despite this, its concentration in the atmosphere has nearly tripled in the period that carbon dioxide’s has increased by 50% and it is reckoned to contribute about 30% of the observed global heating.

Reducing methane emissions rapidly could see an observable reduction in global average temperatures. However, it would be offset by a heating pulse as aerosol pollution caused by burning fossil fuels – which currently has a cooling effect – decreases. Therefore, at least until global net zero, every decade will be hotter and more tempestuous than the one before.)

No change to business as usual

As the Federal budget is about to be delivered on Tuesday, the Climate Change Authority will be closing submissions on a public consultation that it will use to inform its recommendation to the budget for our 2035 emissions reduction commitment.

The CCA’s consultation paper signals their intentions via the headings “ambitious”, “achievable” and “advantageous” – it’s clearly after a target that doesn’t adversely impact business as usual, rather than one aligned with the science of maintaining a habitable planet.

The CCA will take into account the existing 2035 targets for Victoria (75-80%), NSW (70%) and Queensland (75%, which might not survive the next state election); factor the lack of announced targets for the other states and NT, and presumably recommend a national target of perhaps 60-70% off 2005 levels by 2035.

As should be evident by now, this is far from what the science requires.

Inconvenient truths

We’ll get the sort of target that will maintain the fiction that new coal and gas extraction for export projects are viable here because, hey, someone else burns the stuff so most of the emissions are not Australia’s problem. 

It is inconvenient that new satellite data is shining a light on fugitive emissions from such facilities – which can be double or more what is recorded (which would add 10% to Australia’s domestic emissions) – and to its credit the government is currently running a consultation proposing amendments to the current use of outdated industry coefficients that conveniently (for industry) vastly under-report.

On the other hand, it is not proposing to mandate the use of direct measurements that would uncover the full scale of the problem. 

But apparently that’s OK, because carbon capture and storage will fix it, as we learnt last week in the government’s Future Gas Strategy. Albeit that CCS at a gas well-head is only there to capture carbon dioxide that comes out of the well amongst the useful methane gas.

And it only captures a fraction of that, as Chevron’s Gorgon debacle has shown. At best, if it even works, it captures about three fifths of stuff all of the total lifecycle emissions from gas, and it’s pretty difficult to trap vast quantities of fugitive methane escaping from a massive open cast coal mine.

While three quarters of Australia’s gas is exported, another 10% on top is used by the gas industry for processing. In particular, liquifying gas to put it on a ship requires a lot of energy. Based on the latest government figures, 450 Petajoules (PJ) of gas were used locally to process 4,637 PJ for export.

Using the national greenhouse emissions factors, burning 450 PJ of gas produces over 23 million tonnes of greenhouse emissions, or 5% of Australia’s domestic total. Yet nobody is talking about carbon capture for those processing plants. 

All up, including under-reported fugitives, the 96 coal and gas facilities covered by the Safeguard Mechanism in FY22 data emitted over 16% of Australia’s total.

Obviously, as other sectors achieve genuine emissions reduction, this would become a far larger proportion of emissions. Given last year’s reforms to the Safeguard Mechanism, the government would have us believe that those emissions will be offset using carbon credits. It’s just another inconvenient truth that most carbon credits don’t do what it says on the packet.

The budget numbers you won’t hear on Tuesday

The fossil fuel industry and their media spruikers (lately including Masterchef) have carefully crafted a myth of economic indispensability. I’m sure we will not hear on budget night that fossil fuel production contributes a paltry <3% of total federal and state/territory government revenues, while we subsidise them to the tune of around half that.

We won’t hear either that the market capitalisation of fossil energy stocks on the ASX continues to fall relative to the market as a whole, down to only 3.5%. We certainly won’t hear that the industry employs, based on generous estimates, less than 1% of the Australian workforce. 

And as Treasurer Jim Chalmers gravely intones about his government’s rather modest spending on climate action, we will definitely not hear that there is under four years left in the global carbon budget for a coin toss chance of making good our Paris obligation to deliver a safe future. That’s an inconvenient truth the government has chosen to ignore.

But hey, why let facts get in the way of a gaslit recovery?

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Is Peter Dutton’s proposed ‘rollout’ of modular nuclear reactors real policy or just politics? What research has he done to develop the policy? Not much, it seems. Rex Patrick reports.

In September 2020, the Morrison Government released a Low Emissions Technology Statement that placed Small Modular Reactors (SMR) on a list of watching brief technologies. SMR developments were to be monitored to see if they might play a part in Australia’s energy future.

Consistent with that listing, the Government directed the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) to join an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Coordinated Research Project focused on the Economic Appraisal of SMRs to provide information to assist in evaluating the technology’s economic viability.

ANSTO assembled a team to prepare, among other things, a case study on Australia’s potential to adopt SMR technologies in the future and analyse financing options for the technology. As part of that project, ANSTO even supported a University of Queensland PhD thesis on SMRs.

Flip flop politics

Peter Dutton, a minister in the Government that commissioned the ANSTO work, came out mid-way through 2023 with a proclamation of the Coalition’s plans for Australian to adopt SMRs as a preferred tool in our movement towards net zero carbon emissions.

In doing so Dutton opened himself up to a political battering because of the nascent state of SMR development around the world and huge questions around costs.

Dutton’s Nuclear Folly: Small Modular Reactors a political mirage

Undeterred, in early March Dutton doubled down on nuclear power, switching his thinking to large nuclear power plants scattered about the country. As public controversy raged about the new plans, Dutton has started reinjecting SMRs into the total mix.

There are now to be a mix of economic and taxation incentives for the local communities targeted by the Coalition to host a nuclear reactor.

Somewhere in a Coalition back office, there’s a whiteboard with a map waiting to be unveiled.

Missing homework

In response to their hip flip to a larger nuclear power plant and his small flop back to SMRs, I thought MWM set out to see if Dutton has visited ANSTO or taken a brief from them in relation to his plans.

After all, there’s no shortage of precedent for parliamentary oppositions to seek factual briefings from government agencies, especially on complex and specialised subjects.

In a recent nuclear estimates brief prepared for the CEO of ANSTO, the first two paragraphs stated:

“As the custodian of Australia’s nuclear expertise and capabilities, ANSTO is well positioned to advise governments, Australian parliaments, and members of the public on the technical aspects of nuclear power and nuclear power developments globally.”

“ANSTO has significant insight into what other countries and jurisdictions are doing around the world in terms of nuclear power.”

As mentioned above, ANSTO was specifically engaged by the former Coalition Government to take a look at SMRs.

So, I was left gobsmacked when a Freedom of Information request I made to ANSTO to find out what Dutton’s interactions with ANSTO had been over the past five years returned nil information.

Dutton has not visited Australia’s only nuclear reactor and has not received a brief from our country’s expert agency on the policy area he was developing.

In some measure, it explains the flip-flopping and limited detail in many of his announcements.

For completeness, I also asked the Government’s nuclear safety regulator, ARPANSA, if Dutton had visited them or sought advice from them. FOI came up with the same answer from them. Nothing at all.

Politics, not policy

You can’t develop policy just by chin-wagging at party room meetings and with briefs from vested business interests. That’s not how it works. You have to get independent and expert advice, and in the case of nuclear matters, a vital place to get that advice in Australia is ANSTO and ARPANSA.

So, just what policy work has Dutton done? In large part, he appears completely dependent on the Google skills of his little-known Climate Change and Energy spokesperson, Ted O’Brien.

With a background in marketing, O’Brien has no ministerial experience, so the practicalities of major project implementation may be quite novel for him. He did once chair a parliamentary committee inquiry into nuclear energy, but as so often is the case, the research there was largely done by the committee secretariat, with O’Brien just adding a thin layer of pro-nuclear evangelism on the top.

It’s pretty safe to say that, in the absence of comprehensive briefs from and engagement with Australia’s leading experts, Dutton is not engaging in serious policy development. Rather it’s a manoeuvre to achieve political differentiation and keep the anti-renewals, climate-change-denying core of his Coalition happy.  

Dutton’s approach to policy development, in this instance, says just as much about him as it does about his nuclear plans. 

It’s all politics.  

Peter Dutton’s India escape and the secret meetings with the colourful coal baron

This post was originally published on Michael West.

The Department of Industry, Science and Resources is investigating if Empire Energy has been given Research & Development grants in preparation for fracking in the Beetaloo Basin. This is contrary to the R&D program’s rules, Kim Wingerei reports.

The R&D grant program is a popular government scheme assisting businesses doing research and development. It covers up to 43.5% of  R&D costs incurred in the form of tax rebates. However, it cannot be used for “prospecting, exploring or drilling for minerals.”

Empire Energy, an ASX-listed oil and gas company, has received $28.7M in grants over three years from 2021 to 2023. The company is currently exploring gas wells in the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin, where it hopes to start fracking in the future.

In a Senate Estimates hearing last week, Queensland Greens Senator Penny Allman-Payne queried why “Empire’s financial reports state that it accessed the scheme in relation to drilling and fracking gas exploration and appraisal wells in the Beetaloo [Basin], even though gas exploration is excluded from the R and D tax incentive scheme.”

The department is investigating, while Empire CEO Alex Underwood has stated to the ABC that “the activity in question is not exploration to discover gas, but rather undertaking R&D activities with the purpose to generate new knowledge to determine how that gas can be extracted.” It is not clear what ‘new knowledge’ he was referring to.

Apparently, the R&D grants are not the only funding provided by the Australian Government for the project. In a recent presentation to US investors, Empire boasts of $44M in total government funding or 22% of the $200M spent so far.

Empire fracking plans

After having explored the area since 2018, Empire is now focused on the ‘Carpentaria Pilot Project’. Empire has said, via a research report funded by Empire, that the first gas will be delivered to market by 2025. The company is yet to have an agreement to sell gas.

Since 2019, Empire has done seismic testing and drilled and test-flowed four exploration wells. Once in production, Empire also wants to profit from the methane gas that the wells emit.

However, gas companies have so far been required to burn off or ‘flare’ methane gas from exploration wells and could not sell and profit from it. Empire is the first company to actively seek to use controversial new provisions enacted by the NT government in late 2022 to sell gas captured from exploration by building new connecting infrastructure to pipe it to the McArthur River mine. This needs the consent/agreement of Traditional Owners and sign-off from the responsible Northern Territory Minister.

Beetaloo Madness: protestors, farmers, First Nations unite to fight US gas frackers

Empire also plans to apply for up to 750ML of water per annum, or 7.5% of the 10GL made available by the NT government for Beetaloo petroleum production in its recent controversial Georgina Wiso Water Allocation Plan.

Empire is currently preparing an Environment Management Plan for the Carpentaria pilot project, which will be put out for four weeks of public consultation and then submitted to the Northern Territory Minister for Environment, Kate Worden, for approval. The approval is expected to take three to four months.

According to Alison Orme from ‘Original Power‘, a community-focused Aboriginal organisation, the NT petroleum laws say that the Minister must give the approval to sell appraisal gas (gas from exploration) [but] that this is reliant on Empire Energy also obtaining “approval, consent or agreement under the Land Rights Act or the Native Title Act in relation to the sale or other beneficial use of petroleum recovered on an appraisal basis”, ie they must have the agreement of relevant Traditional Owners.

Local opposition to fracking

Empire Energy is not alone in wanting to extract oil through fracking in the Beetaloo. US-based Tamboran Resources are well advanced and recently released their latest plans, also awaiting NT government approval.

The Nurrdalinji Native Title Aboriginal Corporation, which represents native title holders from the Beetaloo Basin, made a submission opposing Tamboran’s latest plans for 15 wells as part of Tamboran’s Environment Management Plan.

Gas fracker Tamboran grabs government cash, snubs Senate, scurries off to tax haven

Chair of Nurrdalinji, Djingili elder Samuel Janama Sandy, said, “Traditional Owners do not want Tamboran drilling for gas. We worry about fracking poisoning water and leaving nothing for our grandchildren.

Tamboran have already been fined for pollution and we can’t trust them to look after country.

“Our culture, stories and communities are connected by the waters that flow underground. We can’t afford to risk this just to fill Tamboran’s pockets with cash.”

‘Lock the Gate‘, who has organised communities against fracking since 2010, goes further, stating in a press release this week that “the NT Government has taken greenwashing to the next level since Eva Lawler was sworn in as Chief Minister, following the release of an Orwellian joint press statement with Tamboran chief executive Joel Riddle.”

According to Orme, “the NT government has deliberately created this new avenue enabling companies to begin to sell fossil methane gas from their exploration operations in the Beetaloo as a means to speed up the ‘monetisation’ of the Beetaloo Basin gas resources.” She continues to say that this is “production by stealth and that that there are no time or volume limits placed on the practice confirms this approach.”

Top End urged to harness the sun and sideline gas

 

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Successive governments have been happy to have Australia as the world’s quarry. But now there’s an additional role for us as the world’s CO2 dump. Rex Patrick reveals the secret plans.

We’ve got a whole continent to ourselves. You’d think our leaders would have had a plan that would take full advantage of that. But that’s not what has happened.

We dig and ship our rocks (and LNG). And while the corporations doing the digging are making billions in profit, little is returned to the Australian public, who actually own the resources.

Australia and Qatar export a similar amount of LNG to the world each year. In 2021 the government of Qatar forecast collecting $26.6 billion in royalties from its LNG reserves. In the same year, Australia forecasted $800 million for a similar volume of gas.

We’ve been giving away much of our national wealth for decades.

Up the value chain

Our ‘leaders’ have got it all wrong. Instead of exporting iron ore, we should be climbing the value and skilled jobs chain and exporting steel. Actually, green steel now.

Australia has the world’s largest titanium reserves, particularly the source metals rutile and ilmenite. We export these minerals at around $400 a tonne and import the titanium powder back at $300K a tonne; 750 times is the value-add produced elsewhere in a market worth close to $U5B.

Instead of shipping billions of dollars in lithium spodumene, we should be climbing the value and skilled jobs chain and exporting trillions of dollars in lithium batteries. Sure, that may well take billions in investment, but that’s what smart governments do.

The Government of Taiwan very deliberately made a strategic investment in (and is the largest shareholder of) the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TMSC), the world’s dominant advanced silicon chip fabricator (including chips for Apple, Amazon and Google). Its revenue in 2022 was $US75B.

Imagine if our leaders had Taiwan’s vision and courage.

Prime Minister Albanese could well argue that ‘the past is the past and can’t be changed now’,

but their new critical minerals strategy is largely one of ‘dig and ship’, again.

Professor Clinton Fernandes’ analysis of the government’s critical minerals strategy is that they aim to “make Australia a better quarry”.

Sadly, we don’t appear to have moved on from journalist and social critic Donald Horne’s pithy observation some six decades ago that “Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck.”

Climate action, until Japan complains

Despite Labor’s electoral success in 2022 on a promise to deal with climate change, Albanese has been duplicitous in meeting his commitment to his constituents.

In the early days of his Government, they formally communicated to the United Nations Climate Change Conference Australia’s new emission reduction targets of 43 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 and net zero by 2050. The Government then quickly brought the targets into law through its Climate Change Bill.

Over the next nine months, Labor legislated an improved safeguard mechanism law, requiring our largest carbon emitters to reduce their emissions every year. Without some form of large-scale carbon abatement, those changes represented a death blow for any new LNG projects.

An LNG wind back wouldn’t be a bad thing for the world. The International Energy Agency has stated the pathway to net zero by 2050 requires that no new oil and gas fields get approved. Complying with that directive would have little effect on Australia’s energy supplies; we have enough gas in existing projects to meet our own needs until the transition to renewables is complete.

But Japan, our second largest trading partner and a key strategic ally, was having none of the decree and launched a concerted attack on Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen and Resources Minister Madeleine King.

Australia had to be a secure and reliable supplier of cheap energy to Japan. After all, how else could Japan do its industrial value-adding without cheap energy?

Sea dumping

One of the projects Japan is relying on for its energy security is Santos’ Barossa LNG project. In June last year the AFR reported Japan had formally requested our government exclude the project from the safeguard mechanism.

Instead, our Government asked the Parliament to make changes to the Environment Protection (Sea Dumping) Act 1981. The explanatory memorandum to the amendment Bill stated the purpose of the amendments was to “implement Australia’s international obligations under the 1996 Protocol to the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter 1972 (the London Protocol)”

But the Bill’s real purpose, at least in part, (as revealed in briefs to ministers obtained under FOI), was to give comfort to Santos and Japan that CO2 from the Barossa project could be piped across the Australian-Timor Leste border for depositing in the depleted Bayu-Undan gas field using carbon capture and storage (CCS).

Carbon Capture and Storage

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a technology that captures, compresses and injects into suitable underground or undersea rock formations CO2 emissions from the production, processing and combustion of fossil fuels, locking it away for all of geological time.

CCS at an industrial scale is largely unproven.

The Gorgon LNG project on the North West Shelf uses CCS to abate some of its CO2 emissions. CCS injection commenced in August 2019, but it’s never been able to sequester the 4 million tonnes of CO2 per annum that it was supposed to. It’s only ever achieved well under half of its objective.

The reality is that CCS is not ready for deployment. Santos anticipates the first injection by 2028, but this is extremely optimistic.

Risks associated with CCS are not fully understood on account of the limited experience with geological storage. The largest and most obvious risk of CCS is leakage of compressed carbon.

Leakage can occur due to pipeline failures, injection well failures, undetected faults, fractures, seal failure, poor site selection, poor preparation and mineral dissolution. Leakage can be abrupt or gradual.

A sudden and large release of CO2 would pose immediate dangers to human life and health, animals and ecosystems. A gradual leak would have similar, but less serious, effects. Both would negate abatement objectives.

Why is CSIRO hiding its advice on Carbon Capture and Storage?

The real plan: Dump

And that leads us to the real ambitions of the Albanese Government.

Whilst amending the Sea Dumping Bill would allow the Barossa project to continue, to the great relief of Japan, it also paves the way for CCS 2050 – Albanese’s plan to make Australia the abatement go-to place for the world.

Australia is to become the world’s CO2 dumping ground.

A briefing provided to Minister Bowen stated:

“Over the last 12 months, there has been [a] significant rise in interest from Australian industry and companies (for example, APPEA, Santos, deepC Store and Denison Gas) as well as regional partners with limited CO2 storage potential, such as Singapore, Japan, and the Republic of Korea (ROK), seeking to establish a pathway for Australia to become a regional location for CO2 geological storage.

“Prospective estimates indicate Australia might have a storage capacity of over 20 billion tonnes (DISER, 2021) in at least four strategic sedimentary basins to safely sequester CO2 permanently underground (both on and offshore).”

The brief also talked of the risk of “the overallocation of storage to international partners,” so popular the idea is with our regional partners.

Our energy bureaucrats are even worrying that this might impact negatively on Australia’s ability to meet our own net-zero goals.  

But this plan hasn’t been discussed publicly. The Government has kept this all very quiet indeed.  There is nothing that describes the extent of the plan, nor the benefits or risks to Australians.

Great Artesian Basin

Certainly, there are concerns as elements of the big plan are brought to life.

In recent months environmentalists and farmers have joined forces to oppose Glencore’s plan to trial the storage of CO2 (from the Millmerran coal-fired power station) in the Precipice Sandstone aquifer 2.3 km underground near the farming town of Moonie, located in the Darling Downs of Queensland within the Great Artesian Basin.

Opponents have rightly expressed concerns about injecting carbon dioxide into the Great Artesian Basin, a water resource worth about $13 billion to the national economy and vital for communities and businesses.

A visionless plan

Anthony Albanese’s world CO2 dump plans need to be revealed in full and properly debated. Albanese needs to sell his plan to the Australian public.

But the truth is, it’s a plan utterly lacking in vision.

Australia should capitalise on its natural advantages. We have what it takes to compete with the industrial powerhouses of China, Japan and South Korea. We have the intellect, innovation and skills they have, but we have the natural resources they don’t. We have the sun, wind and space that they don’t have to ‘do’ in a climate-friendly way.

With real vision, we could ‘dig and do’ cleanly.

We just don’t have a plan.

Instead, we are pandering to the cheap carbon-emitting fossil fuels needs of foreign competitor countries seeking to continue powering their industrial machines to process our minerals.

And in response they’re happy to sell us their value add back to us at many times the price they paid for the rocks we dug up for them. It’s a vision of sorts. But it’s one that has Australia remaining as a colonial economy.

It’s a vision of Australia that was forged in the mid-nineteenth century by British bankers, trading companies and industrialists and Australia’s governing elite acquiesced in exchange for a few scraps from the table.

Nearly two centuries later, not that much has changed – only it’s Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing, rather than London, that are dictating Australia’s economic role to a subservient government in Canberra.

Albanese is breaching his climate change commitments to the electorate and short-changing Australia’s future in more ways than one.

He’s happy to see Australia remain as a deindustrialised quarry.

There was a time when Labor Governments embraced a nation-building ethos – from Ben Chifley’s commencement of the Snowy Mountains Hydro project to Gough Whitlam and Rex Connor’s vision of Australia as a minerals and industrial superpower. But that’s not so with Anthony Albanese.

Rather than having a ‘dig and do’ strategy; he’s content to just ‘dig and dump’.

Race of the Century: Australia is in the box seat on climate and finance, here is the blueprint for victory

This post was originally published on Michael West.

Australia’s peak science body CSIRO has refused to disclose its advice on Carbon Capture and Storage technology. Is it telling the ministers that it doesn’t work, or not? Rex Patrick does the FOIs.

This post was originally published on Michael West.

A damning new report has found car manufacturers are significantly underestimating the lifetime emissions of their combustion engine vehicles, and that investments in car makers are, on average, more carbon intensive than investments in oil companies.

This post was originally published on Michael West.