The countries that signed the 2015 Agreement set carbon “budgets” to limit climate change to a maximum of two degrees above pre-industrial levels, a level of warming predicted to cause major droughts, food shortages and damaging sea level rises. If all of WA’s unconventional gas reserves were exploited, emissions would blow Australia’s carbon budget three times over, the new report found. It also said if the largest of these reserves, shale gas in the Kimberley’s Canning Basin, were exploited it would blow Australia’s carbon budget twice over on its own. The report’s authors said the analysis was the first comprehensive assessment of total carbon pollution potentially released during the lifecycle of all current and prospective gas developments in WA. Lead author and Climate Analytics director Bill Hare said it showed carbon pollution from WA natural gas was an issue of international significance.

He said WA policymakers should focus on gas as a short-term transition fuel only and instead focus on orderly and profitable transition to the role of a global renewable energy supplier over the next three decades. “New investments in unconventional gas would likely become stranded assets, as they face a global gas market that is softening or even declining. Australia’s gas demand can easily be met without any need for unconventional gas resources,” he said in a statement. The report was provided as a submission into WA’s scientific inquiry into gas fracking, part of an election commitment by WA Labor. Labor won government a year ago promising to ban fracking in the Perth metropolitan, Peel and South-West regions and impose a moratorium on the remainder of WA until recommendations from the inquiry could inform future policy. The moratorium pushed the pause button on the potential for fracking in the Canning Basin by a Buru Energy and Mitsubishi joint venture.

The Canning Basin in Australia's west had the third-highest rate of depletion in the world. But the Great Artesian Basin in the east was among the healthiest. Credit:Adam Kerezsy The panel has held public meetings in the Perth and the Fitzroy Crossing, Broome, Dongara and Dandaragan shires over February. Last week about 120 people attended a Conservation Council of WA forum on fracking at the University of WA, with speakers including Professor Anthony Ingraffea from New York’s Cornell University, former WA Premier Professor Carmen Lawrence, University of Sydney Emeritus Professor Bruce Armstrong and Sustainable Energy Now’s Ian Porter. Professor Ingraffe said there had been more than 50,000 shale gas wells drilled in the USA in the past 20 years and more than 1400 peer-reviewed scientific publications on such impacts, the “vast majority” finding undesirable impacts on air, water, and human health. Professor Armstrong said there was increasing evidence that increased greenhouse gas emissions and other hazards associated with fracking resulted in harmful effects on health, and that where such evidence was insufficient or inconclusive WA must be prepared to “apply the precautionary principle”.

Professor Lawrence said there was a growing body of evidence that environmental degradation was contributing to poorer community mental health and such effects were being overlooked. Mr Porter said said there was no longer a strategic energy security risk in not further developing hydrocarbon resources. He said WA had plenty of natural gas for domestic use and that fossil fuels would be displaced on both technical and economic bases by renewables in the near future. The world is already considered to be 1 degree warmer than pre-industrial times and due to this experiencing more frequent and intense extreme events such as heatwaves, droughts and coral bleaching. Anti-fracking protesters gathered on Darwin’s parliament steps to rally against fracking in 2017. Credit:Territory Frack Free Alliance.

While questions remain over how emissions intensive gas will be compared to coal, the inquiry is also tasked with assessing the risks of air and groundwater pollution, even more politically risky territory. The Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association has said the inquiry is unnecessary, that fracking has been proven to be safe and that the industry should be allowed to get on with it. The inquiry is chaired by WA Environmental Protection Authority chairman Tom Hatton, overseeing a panel of four scientists with expertise covering areas such as geology, hydrogeology, water, petroleum engineering, environment, health, ecotoxicity and social science. Tensions persist across the country: Queensland permits coal seam gas fracking, while New South Wales permits it, but not within two kilometres of homes. Five-year bans exist pending further research in Tasmania and the Northern Territory, with the report resulting from the NT inquiry due this month.

The Australia Institute's submission to that inquiry says developing all NT onshore shale oil and gas resources could release the equivalent of 60 times Australia's current annual carbon pollution. Loading Victoria’s Labor government last year imposed a moratorium on onshore gas exploration until 2020, and permanently banned fracking, saying risks outweighed benefits. Promises by the Coalition to cut short the moratorium risked undoing Australia's Paris commitments, analysts warned. Dylan McConnell, a research fellow with Melbourne University's Australia-Germany Climate and Energy College, said states would have to find ways to reduce their gas output if Australia was to meet targets.