David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

We know how important it is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We heard from the Treasurer just last week in his address in Melbourne that further action is required for Australia just to meet its emissions reduction targets, which we know are not in line with what scientists say a wealthy nation like Australia that is one of the highest per capita emitters in the world, a wealthy nation like Australia that is one of the biggest fossil fuel exporters in the world, should be doing as its fair share. Nevertheless, even with our very modest 43 per cent the government say they need to do more.

Despite its name, the Environment Protection (Sea Dumping) Amendment (Using New Technologies to Fight Climate Change) Bill 2023 is not about fighting climate change. The name 'using new technologies to fight climate change' is incredibly misleading and incredibly disappointing from the Labor government. At its heart, this is a bill to allow big oil and gas companies to continue and to expand the burning of fossil fuels and to shift their carbon pollution to other countries, with no liability if the carbon dioxide is accidentally released in the future.

The bill amends the Environment Protection (Sea Dumping) Act 1981 to enable the granting of permits to export carbon dioxide captured from burning coal and gas for the purpose of storing that carbon dioxide under the sea. This means fossil fuel companies can capture the carbon dioxide they produce and ship it to other country's waters, where it would theoretically be injected into undersea geological formations for long-term storage—we hope. By sending their emissions overseas, companies could transfer responsibility elsewhere and meet their safeguard mechanism emissions targets with little real reduction in emissions.

We now hear Labor and the coalition are on a unity ticket on carbon capture and storage, spruiking it as the technology that's going to allow us to continue to expand the fossil fuel industry. We know that there are very legitimate uses for carbon capture and storage, and that's for the hard-to-abate sectors. There's some really good work being done with cement and with other sectors that are genuinely hard to abate. But I'll tell you what isn't hard to abate: opening up new coal, oil and gas projects. How are we, in 2023, rather than taking this seriously, having a Labor government that was supposedly elected promising more bold climate action, while this is what they're offering up? We know that taking climate change seriously means listening to scientists and not expanding the fossil fuel industry at a time when we simply cannot afford to do so.

If we turn to carbon capture and storage and the promise versus the reality, Chevron's Gorgon project in WA aims to capture carbon emissions from their LNG facility on Barrow Island and inject it under the island. However, in the 12 months to June 2022, Chevron injected only 1.6 million tonnes of CO2 into the underground reservoir and vented 3.4 million tonnes to the atmosphere. The project has consistently failed to meet its carbon sequestration targets. This is similar to carbon capture and storage trials globally.

It's my understanding that there are specific projects that will benefit from this bill. Santos has stated that to comply with the safeguard mechanism it is developing a carbon capture and storage project in East Timor's waters. This bill would allow Santos to export its carbon dioxide to East Timor for undersea storage. Just think about that for a moment. Offshore gas development from Santos's Barossa gas project, in Australian waters, will meet the safeguard mechanism by transferring its greenhouse gas emissions to a developing country for undersea storage using a technology that we can't get to work here in Australia. We know that carbon capture and storage is a tactic to delay the demise of the fossil fuel industry, and it's deeply concerning that the Albanese government is seeking to push it through the Senate instead of making sure we meet our net zero target through genuine emissions reductions.

Again, the Treasurer acknowledged that the government needs to do more to secure renewable energy generation, transmission and storage. However, we're now lagging behind the US in incentivising the clean energy transition. We've heard next to nothing from the government, in any substantial way, in response to the Inflation Reduction Act—the biggest investment in climate and energy the world has seen. And the science is very concerning. According to last year's State of the climate report, produced by CSIRO and BOM, Australia's climate has already warmed by an average of 1.5 degrees. Heatwaves are increasing, rainfall patterns are changing, extreme fire weather has increased, and the bushfire season has lengthened, as we see across the country.

According to Pep Canadell, a Canberra based CSIRO climate scientist, recent global investment in clean energy is still insufficient to keep us under 1.5 degrees. Emissions are still rising. Until now the best we've done is to meet the growth in global demand for energy with non-fossil-fuel sources. We haven't actually cut emissions yet. Professor Rod Sims from the ANU has set out three ways Australia can help reduce world greenhouse gas emissions. We can remove emissions from our own economy, we can stop approving new coal and gas projects—something the Labor government doesn't want to hear about—and we can pursue industries in which Australia has a clear comparative advantage in a net-zero world, something that I fear we're missing the boat on with a lack of a response to the Inflation Reduction Act.

I have proposed three amendments to this bill. The first of these directly addresses Professor Sims's approach of stopping new coal and gas projects. If we allow new fossil fuel projects on the basis that the carbon dioxide will be exported, we are allowing global emissions to increase. We cannot assume that the carbon dioxide will be permanently captured using a thus far unsuccessful technology. Therefore, I'm proposing an amendment to exclude new coal and gas projects from the permit and export provisions of the bill. If the government is truly serious about taking the climate crisis seriously, I sincerely hope that they will support these amendments. This amendment is the same as that proposed by the member for Indi, Dr Helen Haines, in the House of Reps. The second of these amendments relates to who is responsible into the future for carbon dioxide stores under the seas released at a later date. It's easy to see how this could happen through failure to maintain equipment, deterioration of infrastructure over time, earthquakes, or other natural processes or events. The third amendment would allow for merits review of a decision to grant a permit under the proposed legislation. There is no good reason why decisions should not be subject to a merit review process. Given what is at stake, we have to ensure that decisions can be scrutinised. This bill should not be passed, but if it is these amendments will provide some limits on the amount of damage that this bill is likely to cause.

Australians sent a strong message at the last election that they want to see the Australian government do a lot better, a huge amount more, when it comes to environmental protection, management and action on climate. This bill is nothing more than greenwashing for gas companies, with potentially catastrophic impacts on our marine environment and sea life. It allows companies to claim to meet emissions reductions targets while exporting those emissions to other countries. It would place the ongoing management of sequestered CO2 in the hands of developing countries, when it's been shown that countries like Australia are struggling to manage it successfully. It will enable the expansion of oil and gas projects that the IPCC and every credible expert say we cannot afford. It's tragic and incredibly disappointing that the government is more interested in supporting fossil fuel companies than it is in protecting our environment, our way of life and our planet. I ask the government to please consider supporting the amendments I've proposed to reduce the climate risks to future generations.

At today's global average temperature rise of 1.2 degrees Celsius, we're seeing the consequences play out before our very eyes—bushfires raging across the country, tropical storms devastating coastal cities in Mexico—yet we have the major parties in Australia on a unity ticket when it comes to supporting the fossil fuel industry. We heard Senator Grogan accusing the crossbench of narrow political interests. The major parties' narrow political interest is looking after the fossil fuel industry, facilitating the expansion of the fossil fuel industry, at a time when every credible climate scientist is urging us, pleading with us, to show some leadership on this.

Dr Joelle Gergis, who was a lead on the IPCC's sixth assessment, which she describes as the last assessment—the last warning—before this window to act closes, talks about it in her bookHumanity's Moment: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope:

… every fraction of a degree of warming matters. Every year of further delay matters. It's the difference between how much we destabilise the ice sheets, the amount of dangerous heat we are exposed to each summer, and whether or not millions of people lose their homes to rising seas. The longer we delay, the more irreversible climate change we will lock in. Any young person can tell you that stabilising the Earth's climate is literally a matter of life or death. It will impact the stability of their daily lives, their decision to start families, and their chance to witness the natural wonders of the world as their parents did. The ability of current and future generations to live on a stable planet rests on the decisions the world collectively makes right now.

Here we are making those decisions, and what have we got? We have the Labor government facilitating the expansion of the fossil fuel industry. Dr Gergis goes on to say:

There are corporate interests that are willing to sacrifice our planetary life-support system to keep the fossil fuel industry alive for as long as humanly possible, using unproven technology. Carbon capture and storage, known as CCS, is based on the idea that you can extract carbon dioxide from the smokestacks of coal plants or steel factories, compress it, transport it and then inject it back underground, where, in theory, it will remain forever. And that's assuming you can find the right geologic conditions that are stable enough over millennia so that carbon doesn't leak out and back into the atmosphere.

The problem is not only that the technology is enormously expensive, but that despite over twenty years of research, it is still unproven to work at the scale required to substantially reduce emissions.

She goes on to point out how foolish it is for us to be facilitating the expansion of the fossil fuel industry, yet here we have the Albanese government, aided by the coalition, doing exactly that.