Australia puts Santos, fossil fuel company, front and centre at Cop26, but it also showcases hydrogen.
[The Guardian] The Australian government has been criticised for prominently hosting a fossil fuel company at its pavilion at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow.The condemnation came as the Morrison government confirmed it would not join about 90 countries in backing the official launch of a global pledge to reduce emissions of methane – a potent greenhouse gas leaked during gas and coal extraction and released by livestock – by 30% by 2030.
The Australian pavilion in the Scottish Event Campus exhibition centre has been a hub of activity during the first two days of the summit. With numbers in the main plenary hall limited, Australians gathered there to watch Scott Morrison’s address to the conference.
Space in the pavilion has been dedicated to Australian businesses, including Andrew Forrest’s green-hydrogen focused Fortescue Future Industries, Sun Cable, which plans to send solar energy captured in the Northern Territory to Singapore and Mineral Carbonation International. Alongside them is the oil and gas giant Santos.
At the front of the pavilion was a Santos demonstration of its Moomba carbon capture and storage project in outback South Australia. Santos confirmed that the A$220m development would go ahead after the government announced it could receive carbon credit revenue from taxpayers through the emissions reduction fund.
Australia’s energy and emissions reduction minister, Angus Taylor, joined Santos’ chief executive, Kevin Gallagher, at the pavilion to trumpet the announcement.
The former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who is in Glasgow as the chair of the Fortescue Future Industries, said it was “a pity” Australia had not signed up to the pledge and “a joke” that Santos had been given prime placement.
Malcolm Turnbull:
Look at the Australian stand – you’ve got a gas company highlighted apparently at the insistence of the energy minister, who thinks that our energy policy should be all about burning gas.
“The whole object is to stop burning fossil fuels.”
“We’ve got to cut all greenhouse gas emissions, methane and CO2, particularly. We can’t keep on pretending that this is a problem we can push out on to the future. We are living with the reality of global warming now.”
Taylor spoke at the pavilion alongside the Santos chief while launching the government’s latest low-emissions technology statement – an annual update of its technology-driven approach to climate change. CCS is one of six priority technologies chosen to get government support.
The minister said Santos’ CCS development at Moomba, which if successful will capture 1.7m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year from 2024, was a “very elegant project” that would allow it to produce gas while reducing emissions. Taylor said there were many different types of CCS but it was initially likely to be used in gas production sites and in the development of “blue” hydrogen using gas.
Angus Taylor:
We can do exactly the same at Moomba and other places in the production of hydrogen
“This is not new, it’s very, very important, it’s going to be particularly important for the gas industry.”
Asked about the global methane pledge, he said Australia’s focus was “whole of economy, all gasses”. “We’re not setting sector-specific targets and we’re not setting gas-specific targets,” he said.
Taylor last week claimed signing up to the pledge would mean cut agricultural herd numbers, and the deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, said the only way to meet it would be to “start shooting your cattle”. Bill Hare, the chief executive of research firm Climate Analytics, said this was not correct.
The government’s 2050 net-zero emissions plan has been criticised for including no new policies and relying on new technology to make emissions cuts in the 2030s and 40s.
Its support for CCS technology – both burying greenhouse gases from industrial sites kilometres underground and potentially using captured carbon dioxide to make products – includes $250m for a “CCS technologies and hubs” program.
Australian governments have committed about $4bn in funding for CCS over time, but it is yet to prove commercially viable at scale. The country has one operating CCS plant, at Chevron’s Gorgon gas development in Western Australia. It has suffered repeated delays and captures only a portion of the emissions at the site.
The Greens’ environment spokesperson, Sarah Hanson-Young, who is also in Glasgow, said the Morrison government was spending Cop26 “busy hanging out with fossil fuel executives and hosting PR stunts for the gas industry”.
The Australian Conservation Foundation said Australia was acting “shamelessly”.
Gavan McFadzean, ACF’s climate program manager.
Make no mistake, the Morrison government’s preoccupation with CCS is about keeping coal and gas Australia’s energy system longer, and delaying the transition to renewable energy with storage.
Taylor said the government was backing renewable energy by adding “ultra low-cost solar” as a priority in the new technology statement, as flagged last week when the government released its plan to reach net zero emissions by 2050. Cutting the price of solar further would be key to producing hydrogen made with renewable energy at scale, he said.
“We welcome all forms of clean hydrogen production – green, blue – they are important,” he said. “You will see green growing rapidly over time, we certainly hope.”
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Australia puts fossil fuel company front and centre at Cop26, November 2, 2021
