Natural gas

ANNETTE MARNER, PRESENTER: Well, will solar thermal power replace the coal-fired Playford B power station at Port Augusta? Now, Port Augusta has two coal-fired plants: Playford B, which became fully operational back in 1964; and the second is the Northern power station, which was commissioned in 1985. Now, these plants provide something like 40 percent of the State’s electricity supply. The older one is used during periods of higher demand - that’s the Playford one - for example, during a heatwave when we’re all running air conditioners. And as we know, the coal for the plants is mined at Leigh Creek and brought to Port Augusta by rail.

Now, Beyond Zero Emissions is an independent not-for-profit organization, they say they receive no government or industry funding. Now, they’ve released a report called Repowering Port Augusta, and very much, the focus is on a vision for Port Augusta being the hub of solar thermal power, ultimately, replacing both [coal-fired] power plants.

Mark Ogge is from Beyond Zero Emissions and joins us. Mark Ogge, welcome to ‘Late Afternoons’ today.

MARK OGGE, BEYOND ZERO EMISSIONS STRATEGIC DIRECTOR: Hi Anne. Good to be here.

Matthew Wright, November 24:

The contentious issue of coal seam gas has become a federal government concern in the dying days of the 2011 parliamentary sitting year. To gain the backing of independents Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor for the minerals resource rent tax, the Labor government has agreed to set up an independent committee to study the environmental impacts of CSG, but the new body won’t end the uncertainty surrounding the controversial industry. 

According to reports, the $150 million Independent Expert Scientific Committee will advise governments on the impacts of CSG extraction on the environment and water. This is definitely a step in the right direction, but it is essential that the scope of the inquiry includes a comprehensive evaluation of the life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of CSG, particularly fugitive emissions.

 The prudent course of action would be for Australian governments to impose a moratorium on CSG mining until its impacts, particularly on water and greenhouse gas emissions, are properly understood. To proceed without this understanding risks irreparable damage to Australia’s productive farmland and aquifers, and a pulse in emissions that could easily eclipse any emissions saving made under the Clean Energy Future package. In the meantime, these uncertainties represent a very real risk to those investing in this embattled industry.

Sydney Morning Herald Environment reports:A MAJOR energy consultancy has been accused of suppressing a report that might have cast doubt on industry assurances that coal seam gas is a much cleaner fuel than coal.

Green group Beyond Zero Emissions, which advocates the development of renewable energy, commissioned a report from consultant WorleyParsons in June. The report, completed in September, is believed to raise questions about the leakage of greenhouse gases such as methane from coal seam gas projects.

Beyond Zero, which has not received the report, is accusing the company of holding it back to protect its lucrative business with the gas industry.

''We have a contract for the delivery of this report,'' Beyond Zero executive director Matthew Wright told The Age.

''The report has been completed and the fact that its findings are inconvenient for the gas industry and WorleyParsons is not a good enough reason for its suppression. It is of the utmost importance that the proper scientific research into the true emissions impact of coal seam gas sees the light of day.''

Online Opinion report:: This week the Australian Parliament passed the Clean Energy Bill. Despite my reservations about the bill, I am pleased to see it finally made law. However, the work of the climate movement has only just begun.

The bill establishes a carbon price which will later become an emissions trading scheme. The policy is admittedly pretty awful and riddled with flaws, but unlike the old Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme at least it is better than nothing. As before, Labor intends to "reduce" Australia's emissions mainly by switching power generation to natural gas and buying carbon offsets from overseas, both of which I consider extremely dubious. However, the Greens, Tony Windsor, and Rob Oakeshott have worked hard to tangibly improve the policy, to the point where it can be considered a first step towards a renewable energy future. These farsighted crossbenchers have won unprecedented, independently-managed renewable energy funding; and built in regular independent reviews which provide opportunities to lift Australia's ambition later on.

Now climate activists need to work on building support for that greater ambition. Although the first independent review of the carbon price is not until February 2014, there is plenty more that can be achieved in the current Parliament. Here's what you should do if you care about climate action.

CLIMATE SPECTATOR reports:A new report commissioned by the peak body of the oil and gas industry suggests that claims coal seam gas exports are up to 70 per cent cleaner than coal exports over their life cycle may not actually be valid. The report by Worley Parsons finds that this is true when compared to coal technologies that are no longer deployed, but it also finds that the life-cycle emissions of CSG may be higher than those of black coal used in the most modern coal plants currently being built in China.

Accounting for the life-cycle emissions of CSG has become a highly contentious point in the debate about the industry, and resistance to it, in particular, from the farming community. The Worley Parsons report, commissioned by the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, analyses a range of scenarios comparing CSG used in baseload and peaking plants, with a range of coal-fired technologies used in China.

While in the best case scenario, CSG does match the claims of the industry that it can be up to 70 per cent cleaner than coal, particularly when replacing the dirtier subcritical coal technology that the Chinese no longer build, the report notes that gas-fired power is likely to add to capacity in China, rather than compete against coal. “An existing coal-fired plant will not be taken off line and replaced by a gas fired plant," it says. "And, in general, large supercritical and ultra-supercritical plants of up to 1000MW are being built to replace redundant small, inefficient coal plants.”

SMH Environment reports: A REPORT commissioned by the coal seam gas industry into its own greenhouse gas emissions, and held as commercial-in-confidence for months, shows that Australian gas exported to China is likely to be little better for the environment than coal.

The industry has been running an advertising campaign claiming that coal seam gas is ''up to 70 per cent cleaner than coal''. But the report, by consulting firm WorleyParsons, compared black coal and coal seam gas exports from Australia to China and showed that only best case scenarios come close to the promised major greenhouse gas savings.

Gas would release less CO2 when burned in a Chinese power plant, but most of the difference would be eaten up by the extra emissions from extracting and processing the gas in Australia.

While the emissions from processing coal made up only 2.7 per cent of its total greenhouse gas output, processing made up 22 per cent of the total emissions from coal seam gas.

By Matthew Wright

CLIMATE SPECTATOR reports:It's time to set a date to phase out Australia's old 19th century gas networks. In their place, the electricity network can take on all of the energy tasks of the old gas networks and do it with higher efficiency and better economies of scale, bringing cost saving to all consumers at a time when the cost of living is constantly rising.

Simply put, all the services provided by the gas network today can be provided more efficiently by electricity. Some of the money saved from the expense of keeping the old legacy gas network will be rolled into upgrading the electricity network and the rest will be delivered as savings to energy consumers, who will pay less when they pay once for electricity, rather than paying twice for both electricity and gas.

Here we have a big long-term productivity opportunity. It is completely inefficient and costly to be running an extra, redundant and inferior energy network. Already, in the 1930s, the role of gas was diminishing, being replaced by much safer and more controllable electricity for lighting. Since that time, the ever expanding energy needs of our modern economy – for powering computers, refrigeration and televisions – have been met by electricity and not by gas.

The Age Business Day reports: WE ARE adults here. We know that there will be some very tough trade-offs that will be needed to tackle climate change. But the oil and gas industry is asking too much if it wants Australians to incur the costs of a coal seam gas (CSG) boom, without clearly pointing out the benefits.

Until lately it was widely assumed that gas is a cleaner-burning fuel than coal, with lower greenhouse gas emissions. The rise of unconventional gas extraction - whether from shale, coal seam or tight sand gas fields - has called that assumption into question, and guess what? The answer is frightfully unclear.

It would be fair to say most of the data is old or industry-funded or based on different practices used for extraction overseas. Or hidden.

The ''We Want CSG'' ads sponsored by the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association say coal seam gas burned to produce baseload electricity produces ''up to'' 70 per cent fewer emissions than coal.

The debate about coal seam gas drilling in Australia is intensifying, amid calls from The Greens to further investigate its emissions profile.

So what is the emissions profile of coal seam gas? How does it stack up against coal and renewables? We spoke to a US researcher whose study was among the first to raise concerns about emissions. We also asked two Australian researchers to provide different perspectives on the issue.

Renee Santoro is co-author of a study from Cornell University which has been much quoted in discussions about the emissions of natural gas versus coal. That study found that, assuming a 20-year timeframe and using the most up-to-date figures for the global warming potential of methane, natural gas potentially contributes more to climate change than coal does.

The Conversation spoke to Renee about how applicable this study was to Australian conditions. She told us that while their work was conducted on US shale and conventional gas using US geological conditions, for production-to-end-use, emissions should be applicable to CSG: “gas is gas at that point,” she said.

Australia's transition to a clean energy future has long assumed a greater role for gas, including the newly emerging coal seam gas sector being developed in eastern states of the country. But Greens leader Bob Brown and his deputy, Christine Milne, have claimed in recent days that the 'jury is out' on whether gas will deliver greenhouse gas emission savings.

Beyond Zero Emissions is an independent, non-profit organisation pushing the case for a rapid transition to a zero carbon renewable future. They've been working on a report looking at the carbon footprint of gas. The report will look at its greenhouse emissions over the whole production cycle.

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