Morrison Puts Fossil Fuel Company Branding, CCS Bullshit Front And Center In Glasgow
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 on Monday.
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 on Tuesday was a Santos demonstration of its Moomba carbon capture and storage project in outback South Australia. Santos confirmed on Monday 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.
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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.
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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/nov/03/australia-puts-fossil-fuel-company-front-and-centre-at-cop26