‘There’s no room for any new long-term fossil fuel developments,’ climate scientists say

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A gas boom in the Northern Territory would contribute as much as 6.6% to Australia’s annual emissions, according to data in a report from an inquiry examining the risks associated with fracking.

The final report by the inquiry’s committee assessed the emissions from exploration, producing gas from the planned new gasfields and from burning that proportion of the gas destined for the domestic market.

The inquiry assessed a production scenario of 1,240 petajoules a year and found it would equate to 6.6% of Australia’s emissions and 0.17% of global emissions, based on national emissions data for 2015.

The figure is equivalent to about 25% to 30% of what is emitted by Australia’s entire transport sector.

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In this scenario, the committee assumed that 38.8m tonnes of carbon would be emitted domestically, but more than one and a half times that amount – a further 60m million tonnes of carbon – would be emitted overseas as a result of gas being exported. It did not include the emissions from burning the exported gas.

The inquiry also assessed a lower scenario and found even a single onshore shale gasfield in the NT would produce double the amount of emissions as the entire Australian waste sector. This single gasfield, producing 365 petajoules annually for the domestic market, would increase Australia’s emissions by 4.5%.

Experts say these increased emissions would jeopardise the commitments Australia made to the landmark 2015 Paris climate change agreement.

“Other Australian industries will have to reduce their emissions by the equivalent of the Northern Territory’s fracking emissions to fulfil our Paris commitments,” said Mark Ogge, principal adviser at the Australia Institute.

“Why should the rest of Australia’s industries have to carry the can to make room for the oil and gas industry?”

In April, the Northern Territory government announced it would lift a moratorium on fracking if 135 recommendations from the inquirywere implemented.



This was despite the fact that the final summary report warned there could be “unacceptable” climate impacts as a result of opening up new reserves.

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The committee said the scenarios it had assessed were based on no mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions occurring and “at these levels, the assessed GHG risks are, in the panel’s view, unacceptable.”

It argued the risks could be mitigated if emissions from potential projects were offset, but the Northern Territory government has not outlined how this could be done, despite repeated requests from Guardian Australia.

In a statement, the NT’s chief minister, Michael Gunner, said people were “legitimately concerned about increased greenhouse gas emissions from fracking”.

“And that’s why, as recommended by the inquiry, I have asked Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten to partner with us in offsetting all additional emissions,” he said.

However, climate scientists say that “the days of offsetting are gone” and that the time for referring to gas as a transitional energy source is over.



“This notion that gas is a clean fuel and a transition fuel – that might have been true 15 years ago,” said Will Steffen, an emeritus professor at the Australian National University’s Fenner school and a councillor with the Climate Council.

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“But we’ve burned so much fossil fuels in the last 10 or 15 years, there’s no room for any bridging fuels, there’s no room for any new long-term fossil fuel developments.

“If we’re serious about Paris, we have to put in place plans to get out of all types of fossil fuels.”

In Western Australia, there is also an inquiry under way that is considering whether to open up parts of the state to unconventional gas, including the Canning basin in the Kimberley.

Natural gas, such as that found in the NT and WA’s shale reserves, is primarily composed of methane, which is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Bill Hare, a climate scientist and director of Climate Analytics, said the gas industry is “overestimating how much gas can be burnt globally and still meet the Paris agreement” of limiting global warming to 2C.



This year Climate Analytics published a report that examined Western Australia’s Canning basin and other unconventional gas resources in the state and found the domestic carbon footprint of Western Australia’s unconventional gas resources was “three times what Australia is allowed to emit in order to comply with the Paris agreement”.

The domestic footprint – that is gas that would not be exported – of the Canning basin alone was found to be double what Australia could emit under the Paris agreement.

Appea, the gas and petroleum industry body, has rejected the findings and said the numbers were based “on the development over a very short period of time of the entire onshore gas resource”.

The Appea Northern Territory and South Australia director, Matthew Doman, said: “The use of renewable energy is increasing, but the reality is we will use very substantial amounts of gas for decades to come, and so it is reckless to turn our back on new supplies.”

But Hare said this was incorrect and the assessments in the Climate Analytics report were based on plausible domestic usage rates.

He said it was “unsafe” for organisations or governments to “believe that the natural gas bridge was a 50-year bridge” and if Australia had a stronger climate policy in place, there would be stronger signals about the need to transition.

“But there isn’t one and it’s not working and that means that industry are not getting the signals about how much emissions matter, what they cost and what the liability in their future is going to be,” he said.