As someone who has worked in the resources industry for three decades, much of it as a chief financial officer for major mining companies, it has been frustrating over the past week to see how the oil and gas industry has tried to position itself as part of the solution to lowering emissions and tackling climate change - rather than acknowledging it is a large part of the problem.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Let us be clear at the start: gas is a fossil fuel that's driving climate change.
Major reports recently from the IPCC and even the conservative International Energy Agency - founded by the oil industry - point to a clear expert consensus: avoiding catastrophic climate change and achieving net-zero emissions should mean no new gas, coal, or oil developments. Last week's IPCC report confirmed that the global warming effect of methane, which predominantly makes up gas, is higher than first thought.
Methane concentrations in the atmosphere are not only continuing to grow but accelerating. Experts like the Climate Council's Professor Will Steffen, the former executive director of the ANU's Climate Change Institute, largely attribute this increase to the gas industry's expansion.
And yet, the oil and gas industry has relentlessly pushed for new gas projects in Australia, from Scarborough in Western Australia to Narrabri in NSW. This expansion can only lead to increased emissions.
This is what exacerbating climate change looks like - not solving it. The industry's mouthpiece, the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, simply has no valid claim to being part of the solution when it and its members are aggressively pushing to expand gas extraction.
In addition, gas companies continue to calculate their declared CO2-equivalent emissions from methane in a way that significantly understates them. It's like a game.
Parts of our economy today still rely on oil and gas, but the only course of action compatible with net-zero emissions and a safe climate is to spare no effort in the transition to cleaner options like renewable energy or alternative materials - not prolonging existing, dangerous incumbents like gas.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS), the gas industry's go-to climate cop-out, is unproven and expensive. Not a single CCS project in the world has been delivered on time or on budget, and captured the agreed amount of carbon - including Chevron's much-touted but failing Gorgon project in Western Australia.
READ MORE:
It is also a cop out for the gas industry to mention the royalties companies pay, without also mentioning the billions of dollars of public subsidies the industry receives and the minimal tax many of those same companies pay. Let's see them published together.
If fossil-fuel lobby groups like APPEA seriously backed the science of climate change, they would accept the expert advice that new gas, oil and coal projects are fundamentally incompatible with a safe climate, and back new and cheaper renewable energy.
Instead, to protect their profits, fossil-fuel companies have perpetuated decades of misinformation about climate change, spent billions on political donations to stall climate action and secured public funding for a "gas-led recovery".
Even now the industry and Morrison government seek to muddy the waters of a possible future clean energy source, hydrogen, with references to "clean hydrogen" or "blue hydrogen" - hiding the fact that unless it is made using renewable energy, it is doing nothing to reduce emissions. If you don't understand the point here, then the government misinformation campaign is working. Hint: "clean" is not the same as green. Clean is dirty but cleaned by CCS (if it worked) and planting trees (if the maths was correct and you had enough time to wait for the trees to grow). Green like solar and wind don't require "cleaning" and render the debate about whether CCS works redundant.
When it comes to climate change, fossil fuels - like coal, oil and gas - are the cause, because they are the biggest driver of greenhouse gas emissions.
The industry should either innovate and genuinely clean up its act, or get out of the way. Recent write-offs like those of AGL are just a sign of companies that have moved too slowly to adapt.
- Michael Allen is a former chief financial officer for listed resource companies and has worked in senior executive positions for companies including AngloGold, Anglo American and Resolute Mining. He is now treasurer of renewable-energy think tank Sustainable Energy Now.