A report finding that carbon pollution from a new fracking industry in the Northern Territory could be offset relies on unproven technology and "wildly unrealistic" assumptions, according to one of Australia's most respected climate authorities.
The report, produced by a gas industry-funded research arm of Australia's peak scientific agency, has been published almost a year behind schedule and as the NT government prepares to announce whether full-scale fracking will be allowed to go ahead.
The report's authors were tasked with determining how — and if — the NT government's promise to offset all greenhouse gas emissions from fracking the Beetaloo Basin could be achieved.
It was completed by the Gas Industry Social and Environment Alliance (GISERA), which receives a third of its funding from the gas industry and is auspiced by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industry Research Organisation (CSIRO).
The researchers examined four scenarios involving gas production of 365 petajoules per year, and one scenario of 1,130 petajoules per year, with a variety of uses for the produced gas.
The authors conclude that, "from an engineering perspective", emissions from a modestly-sized fracking industry "were able to be completely mitigated or offset within Australia".
The finding has been welcomed by the NT government, which has staked development of the industry on the promise of no net increase to the country's carbon emissions.
But the report's conclusions have been savaged by green groups and emissions integrity whistleblower and law professor Andrew Macintosh.
"I think it's wildly unrealistic — the scenarios around the capacity for offsets to be supplied for this project are fundamentally unrealistic," the former head of the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee said.
Report assumes majority of gas will be exported
The report assumes that between 50 and 75 per cent of the gas produced in the Beetaloo would be exported from Darwin, with overseas emissions not included in the report's calculations.
Addressing the rest of the pollution would require a mix of mitigation, carbon reduction or "abatement" projects, and the use of up to 10 per cent of all of the land-based carbon credits currently available in Australia.
The authors also said it would require the use of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, with potential for gas to be used in petrochemical and hydrogen production in Darwin.
But they acknowledged the technology remains in a "nascent" stage — CCS remains controversial and has not been proven to reduce emissions at large scale.
Those findings assume only a relatively small-scale industry is developed in the basin.
Anything beyond that would require international offsets, the authors wrote, which are currently not allowed in Australia.
Professor MacIntosh was the chair of the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee, a statutory body tasked with vetting the integrity of carbon offset schemes under the Coalition government's Emissions Reduction Fund.
Even on the smaller scale, Professor Macintosh said the levels of abatement assumed in the GISERA report were seriously over-stated.
"A good example is the abatement estimates provided for human-induced regeneration, which are based on the assumption that almost 50 million hectares of Australia's uncleared rangelands have somehow lost at least 95 per cent of their natural tree and shrub cover," he said.
"This is nonsense."
The offsets assumed to come from tree planting would require an amount of seed and seedling supply that does not exist, Professor Macintosh said.
"I'm a big supporter of [environmental planting projects], but it is simply not possible to get that amount of sequestration in the time-frames that we're talking about here," he said.
He said the claims being made in the report were not credible.
"I think it highlights all the problems with offsets, that this sort of work is being used to allow and facilitate a gas development," he said.
"Now, I'm not against gas developments, but if we're going to require gas developments to offset then we've got to make sure their offsets have got integrity."
The report does not estimate the potential cost of offsetting emissions from the basin, which is located 500 kilometres south-east of Darwin.
The authors flag potential problems with their assumed use of one-tenth of Australia's available emissions offsets, noting "competition" from other industries.
"These market aspects have not been explored, nor the opportunity costs of interest to policy makers," the authors wrote.
Australia Institute research director Rod Campbell said the abatement figures in the report were not credible.
"Basically, you need to believe in every fairytale in the gas industry storybook to accept the idea that a large, new gas industry in the Northern Territory can be offset or somehow benign to the climate," he said.
"The fact is, this is going to be an extremely highly polluting industry.
"It's going to drive climate change, it's going to make the abatement task of other industries in Australia and the territory much harder."
CSIRO defends quality of research
At the end of the report the authors note an "unexplored opportunity cost" that was outside their terms of reference.
That is, "how else might we use Australian land-based offsets and CCS rather than abating the impact of onshore shale gas, which would otherwise maintain or add to cumulative GHG emissions."
"As we have deferred any cost–benefit analysis, we also leave any analysis of opportunity cost to a further study."
In a statement, GISERA director Dr Damien Barrett defended the report, saying the "CSIRO stands behind the quality of its research the integrity of its peer review process".
He said the report included data that reflected "the latest analysis of technologies and opportunities to offset greenhouse gas emissions within Australia, including carbon capture and storage".
Dr Barrett said the researchers mainly evaluated the use of CCS technology in the context of "downstream manufacturing processes" that required methane, such as ammonia production.
"Carbon capture and storage is one of the only mitigation options available in harder-to-abate industries such as these," he said.
Dr Barrett also said the researchers only considered international offsets in instances where the estimated carbon emissions exceeded 10 per cent of the offsets or mitigation measures available in Australia.
Gas industry, NT government welcome report's findings
The NT director of the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA), David Slama, said he welcomed GISERA's report and said Beetaloo gas would help provide cleaner power as coal stations shut down.
"The report also highlights a range of technological solutions that can help the development align with Australia's climate mitigation goals," he said in a statement to the ABC.
"Australia's oil and gas industry … is a major investor in renewables, carbon capture and storage, and other emissions reduction technologies, with billions of dollars of investments."
In a statement, a spokesperson for the NT government said the GISERA report showed the risks of onshore shale gas production "could be mitigated, reduced or in some cases eliminated".
"This takes into account the recommendation that we seek to ensure no net increase in life cycle greenhouse gas emissions emitted from the onshore gas industry in the Territory, and the NT will continue to cooperate with the Australian government to this end," the spokesperson said.
"The government will consider this report in future decision making for emissions management of the petroleum industry and in developing an emissions reduction strategy for the NT."
Efforts by the NT government to get the Commonwealth's help on the question of offsets appear to have been unsuccessful.
The ABC's interview requests with the office of Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen have gone unanswered.
