The words from the resources minister, Madeleine King, must have felt like a comforting salve to Australia’s gas industry.
In a speech last week in Western Australia, King told resource industry figures in Perth that gas would be indispensable as Australia and the region decarbonised.
Gas and LNG was portrayed as a multi-purpose ointment that could help alleviate “energy poverty” in developing countries, decarbonise economies, stave off threats to energy and food security, be an economic salvation and the critical ingredient for the metals and minerals needed to build solar panels, batteries and wind turbines.
The government was committed to reaching net zero by 2050 and “natural gas will help us reach the target”, King told the Resources Technology Showcase.
Is there anything gas can’t do? The fossil fuel also warms the planet, both when it’s burned and when it leaks as methane – two points not mentioned by King.
So what else?
King told the conference that Woodside’s $16bn plans for LNG expansion with offshore gas in Western Australia “will help customers in Asia move away from higher-emitting fuel sources”.
“It will maintain Australia’s reputation as a reliable and lower-emissions energy supplier,” she said.
Such a confident statement from the minister contradicts work by CSIRO that was commissioned by Woodside to answer this very question. What impact would adding large volumes of LNG to markets in Asia and elsewhere have on emissions?
CSIRO’s 2019 report was technical and came with caveats but the conclusions were clear. Gas could help lower emissions if carbon prices or other signals were “strong enough to force high renewable electricity generation shares”.
But it added: “Until the carbon price reaches that level their impact on emissions reduction is either negative or neutral. After renewables have reached a high share, additional gas supply has nothing further to contribute to emissions reduction.”
Economy booster?
King said export revenues for LNG were forecast “to reach $90bn in the 2023 financial year, providing a considerable boost to the economy”.
This is true, and the figure is based on a March report from the chief economist.
Revenues had tripled this year compared with last, but this was down to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine which saw countries scramble for alternative sources of gas and has helped gas companies reap enormous profits.
But what the report also said – but King left out of her speech – was that as “global energy markets reorganise” that $90bn would fall by half to $45bn in just five years.
Energy poverty versus the climate crisis
“It is often forgotten,” said King, “but Australia’s coal and gas resources are essential for energy security, stability and reliability, both domestically and across the Asia-Pacific, and will be for decades.”
“In many cases Australian gas has the potential to lift millions out of energy poverty,” she said.
This claim that gas can help the developed world out of energy poverty is reminiscent of a talking point the coal industry developed in the 2010s and then deployed in global marketing campaigns, while convincing Australian government ministers to repeat them.
Bruce Robertson, an LNG analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said: “For something to alleviate energy poverty, it needs to be cheap and readily available. LNG is neither of these things, and hasn’t been for the last few years.”
Gas for solar panels?
For the last three years, some of Australia’s heavy industry majors – such as BHP, Rio Tinto and Fortescue – have been collaborating with decarbonisation experts for a project part-funded by the government to understand how they can slash their reliance on fossil fuels.
During King’s speech she said that gas was “essential for energy-intensive projects such as extraction, concentration and processing of critical minerals”.
King said: “To repeat: batteries, windfarms, solar panels – they all need minerals, and we will need gas to process those minerals.”
While it’s true that fossil fuels are a big part of heavy industry, some of the biggest mining companies are saying – unlike King – that they are looking for change.
On the same day that King delivered her speech declaring gas was essential for producing minerals such as nickel, cobalt, lithium and copper, the companies collaborating in that three-year project made a declaration.
They wanted government to work with them to “accelerate development and demonstration of the emerging technologies needed” to lower emissions.
“We are ready to seize this opportunity and are calling on others to join us,” they said, striking a somewhat different tone than King, who on the very same day appeared stuck on the idea that gas was the only answer.
At the same time, at least one of those companies – Woodside – has plans to rapidly expand fossil fuel production. Contradictions all around?
Victorians back gas?
An “exclusive” story in the Australian last week said “more than 60% of Victorians” believed gas had an “important role to play in Australia’s transition to net zero carbon dioxide emissions”.
The story was based on a survey of 3,000 people “in inner-city Melbourne, outer-suburban Melbourne, Bendigo, Ballarat and Wodonga” by the advisory group RedBridge, and commissioned by the Australian Pipelines and Gas Association.
The gas industry has been on a PR spree, as it tries to ward off calls for gas to be phased out from residential homes.
A media release from Apga showed how two of the survey questions were asked. Polling expert, emeritus professor Murray Goot, of Macquarie University, has some issues.
Goot told Temperature Check they were written in a way that bore “some of the hallmarks of advocacy polling” and tended to encourage the reader to give an “affirmative response”.
But judge for yourself.
One question said: “Prime Minister Anthony Albanese recently said gas has a key role to play in our transition to renewable energy and will help smooth the shift to renewables. How important do you think the role of natural gas is in Australia’s transition to renewable energy?”
According to Apga, the responses showed 63.8% “acknowledge the importance of natural gas in Australia’s transition to net zero”, even though the phrase “net zero” didn’t appear in the question.
This was a “leading question” which had a “contextual bias”, Goot said. Respondents had four options – “very important”, “somewhat important”, “not important” and “unsure” which, Goot said, meant there were two chances to respond positively, and only one to respond negatively.
A second question said: “Renewable gases are produced using natural biological processes, or converting water to hydrogen and oxygen using renewable energy. They are net-zero gases and can be used to replace natural gas in homes and businesses. What is your attitude toward using renewable gas in your home?”
Goot said the question “seems to have been designed to get an affirmative response” and failed to point out any downsides, such as cost.
The gas industry has been talking up the prospects for “renewable gas” despite it producing almost none. Experts say adding hydrogen to regular gas in residential networks would require either new appliances, or modifications, once the mix gets to about 20%.
Kosmos Samaras, RedBridge’s director of strategy and campaigns, said the survey “utilised a robust methodology to examine a range of attitudes/responses with regards to our renewables transition.”
He claimed it was “grossly irresponsible” to comment on a “research methodology” based on only two questions, and without knowledge of the “research objective and the context of those questions”.
Temperature Check asked Apga and RedBridge about other questions that were asked, but neither responded to that question.
In a statement, Apga said it “stands behind the quantitative research undertaken by RedBridge” and it was a “strong supporter of a rapid transition toward net zero”.
Goot responded, saying that to claim it was irresponsible to comment on the survey when only two questions had been fully disclosed was “to play a game that only the market research firm and their client can win”.
