# Australia's "Gas-Fired Recovery," Carbon Capture, and Greenwashing

An episode of [Drilled](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1439735906), 19 May 2022, 24 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/pdrl.fm/3e5572/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/9a7ab5ee-ce11-48ff-a544-b3ec00ea9b1e/46c13d52-04ea-4199-83dc-b3ec00f13696/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f82f371-6316-4ea6-a108-b3ec00ea9b2d

Australians head to the polls for the first election since catastrophic bush fires destroyed millions of acres of land and blanketed the country in smoke for weeks. In the lead-up to the election, we examine the government's current climate policies and a risky proposed move to store carbon deep in the ocean. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Australia is about to hold its first federal election since
[0:03] Speaker 1: record breaking bush fires, fueled at least in part by
[0:06] Speaker 1: intense heat and drought and made worse by climate change.
[0:11] Speaker 2: Flames have been reported to have reached seventy meters high
[0:15] Speaker 2: that These pictures from Monday show huge blazers in the
[0:19] Speaker 2: state of Victoria. The plume of smoke generated by the
[0:23] Speaker 2: inferno covers five and a half million square kilometers. That's
[0:28] Speaker 2: the size of Europe.
[0:29] Speaker 1: The fires finally died out just over two years ago,
[0:33] Speaker 1: after burning for nearly a year across sixty million acres.
[0:47] Speaker 1: Around the world, the fires were covered as a wake
[0:50] Speaker 1: up call on climate change, but in Australia, the government
[0:54] Speaker 1: under Conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison has seemed more concerned
[0:58] Speaker 1: with putting a positive spin on its climate record in
[1:01] Speaker 1: the lead up to this weekend's election. Soon after the fires,
[1:06] Speaker 1: the government proposed a gas fired recovery from the pandemic,
[1:10] Speaker 1: and in twenty twenty Australia became the world's biggest exporter
[1:14] Speaker 1: of gas, with a government scrambling to fast track projects
[1:17] Speaker 1: including fracking on indigenous lands and offshore drilling to help
[1:23] Speaker 1: sell its expansion into gas the Morrison government has invested
[1:26] Speaker 1: in promoting new technologies, including carbon capture and storage and
[1:30] Speaker 1: a product it calls clean Hydrogen made from coal and gas.
[1:35] Speaker 3: We're investing billions in projects like hydrogen harbs and seaweed
[1:38] Speaker 3: for food arm which means.
[1:40] Speaker 1: In the lead up to the election, the government ran
[1:42] Speaker 1: an unprecedented ad campaign branding its investment in new technologies
[1:47] Speaker 1: as positive energies.
[1:48] Speaker 3: Australia's making positive energy and there's more on the way.
[1:51] Speaker 3: We've put solar panels here, here and there. In fact,
[1:55] Speaker 3: more than one in four homes have solar.
[1:58] Speaker 1: The slogan is weirdly similar to the theme of this
[2:00] Speaker 1: week's Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association's conference, Positive Energy
[2:06] Speaker 1: for a Changing World. Both major parties, Morrison's conservative Liberal
[2:11] Speaker 1: Party and the more center left Labour Party, send speakers
[2:14] Speaker 1: to the conference just days before the election. But despite
[2:22] Speaker 1: all this talk of positive energy, many Australians are heading
[2:26] Speaker 1: to the election with less positive feelings about climate change.
[2:30] Speaker 1: The country has yet to truly reckon with the fires
[2:32] Speaker 1: that burnt out a little over two years ago, and
[2:35] Speaker 1: already this year there've been floods, heat waves and mass
[2:38] Speaker 1: bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef. The government's positive spin
[2:44] Speaker 1: on future technologies that will allow the gas industry to
[2:47] Speaker 1: keep polluting today also downplays other problems for the fossil
[2:51] Speaker 1: fuel industry, including the growing costs and pollution risks of
[2:55] Speaker 1: aging coal mines and rusting oil rigs. The industry tree
[3:00] Speaker 1: is facing a growing bill to clean up its old infrastructure,
[3:03] Speaker 1: but some companies have been finding creative solutions, including one
[3:08] Speaker 1: company which hopes government grants and commercial customers for carbon
[3:11] Speaker 1: capture and storage will help it deal with an empty
[3:15] Speaker 1: hole at the bottom of the t or C. That's
[3:22] Speaker 1: the story that we're digging into today on Drilled. I'm
[3:25] Speaker 1: Lindall Rowlins, reporting from Australia. In twenty nineteen, Australia signed
[3:46] Speaker 1: a new treaty with tim Or Leste, recognizing that oil
[3:49] Speaker 1: and gas fields in the t or C that Australia
[3:52] Speaker 1: had laid claim to for decades were in fact in
[3:55] Speaker 1: Ti Marie waters. But by the time the treaty was signed,
[4:00] Speaker 1: any of the most viable oil and gas fields in
[4:02] Speaker 1: the t or Sea were close to empty. Instead, what
[4:06] Speaker 1: was left were rusting oil rigs, hundreds of kilometers of
[4:10] Speaker 1: pipelines and empty wells under the sea that would need
[4:13] Speaker 1: to be filled with concrete.
[4:15] Speaker 4: Decommissioning is a growing challenge for the Australian oil and
[4:18] Speaker 4: gas industry and was recently estimated that removal of oil
[4:22] Speaker 4: and gas equipment and plugging wells will cost around twoty
[4:26] Speaker 4: two billion Australian dollars.
[4:28] Speaker 1: Here's Adrian Evans from the Maritime Union of Australia.
[4:31] Speaker 4: There's currently one thousand and eight offshore wells, fifty seven
[4:35] Speaker 4: fixed facilities, six and a half thousand kilometers of pipeline,
[4:39] Speaker 4: fifteen hundred kilometers of umbilicals, and some five hundred and
[4:43] Speaker 4: thirty five subsea structures such as manifolds.
[4:46] Speaker 1: Evans were speaking at a Senate inquiry that was called
[4:49] Speaker 1: after an Australian company, Woodside, sold two oil fields in
[4:52] Speaker 1: the tm Or Sea to a company which soon went bankrupt.
[4:56] Speaker 1: These two oil fields came with a rusting oil platform,
[5:00] Speaker 1: the Northern Endeavor, and clean up costs to prevent potential spills.
[5:05] Speaker 5: The Northern Endeavor is still there, it's rusting, it's leaking,
[5:09] Speaker 5: it's in terrible shape and it's potentially a huge danger
[5:14] Speaker 5: to both tim Or Lester and Australia if it fully
[5:17] Speaker 5: leaks out what it has.
[5:19] Speaker 1: Charles Schiner has spent decades researching oil and gas revenues
[5:22] Speaker 1: in the tm or C. For the timers, think tank Laohamatook.
[5:26] Speaker 5: It'll cost somewhere around two hundred million more than two
[5:29] Speaker 5: hundred million dollars to be commissioned the Northern Endeavor and
[5:33] Speaker 5: lamon Eric Arena and bring it to a safe condition.
[5:37] Speaker 1: After the inquiry, the federal government introduced a levy on
[5:40] Speaker 1: Australian oil exports to pay for the decommissioning of the
[5:43] Speaker 1: Northern Endeavor, but this didn't make companies like Chevron, which
[5:47] Speaker 1: would have to pay a larger share of the costs.
[5:49] Speaker 1: It's exactly happy the decision to impose the costs and
[5:54] Speaker 1: oil companies did benefit at least one company, though Woodside,
[5:59] Speaker 1: which sold the Northern End just before it began to
[6:02] Speaker 1: rust into the sea.
[6:03] Speaker 5: Somehow doesn't have any responsibility, even though the other ones
[6:06] Speaker 5: who made all the money from this field.
[6:08] Speaker 1: He says, this is not the first time that Woodside
[6:10] Speaker 1: has benefited from the Australian government's decisions in the tm.
[6:13] Speaker 5: Or CEA Woodside is politically well connected enough that they
[6:17] Speaker 5: could wipe the tens and walk away and somehow doesn't
[6:20] Speaker 5: have any responsibility even though the other ones who made
[6:22] Speaker 5: all the money from this field.
[6:23] Speaker 1: But the two fields Woodside abandoned weren't the only fields
[6:27] Speaker 1: in the tm Or Sea that need to be decommissioned.
[6:30] Speaker 1: Further east is a much larger field known as Bayou Undan.
[6:34] Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen, another Australian company, Santos, purchased Conoco Phillips's
[6:39] Speaker 1: interests in the tm Or Sea, including Bayou Undan, as
[6:43] Speaker 1: well as another field that has yet to be developed
[6:46] Speaker 1: in the Australian part of the tm Or Sea called Barossa.
[6:50] Speaker 1: Jason Fowler is a marine ecologist with the Environment Center
[6:53] Speaker 1: Northern Territory.
[6:55] Speaker 6: Santos are up for about a billion dollar bill to
[6:58] Speaker 6: decommission the old Bayou Known field. Now, the reason for
[7:01] Speaker 6: this is because there's dozens and dozens of gas wells
[7:04] Speaker 6: out there. They all need to be properly capped and sealed,
[7:08] Speaker 6: so you need to pump, concreting them and really seal
[7:11] Speaker 6: them up properly so they never ever leak. You know,
[7:13] Speaker 6: if they do leak, you could very well have oil
[7:16] Speaker 6: and condensate and gas bubbling up to the surface forever
[7:20] Speaker 6: and which forms permanent pollution, which is something you don't
[7:23] Speaker 6: want to ever see.
[7:25] Speaker 1: But Santos has announced that its plans could potentially offset
[7:29] Speaker 1: or at least delay some of the costs of decommissioning
[7:31] Speaker 1: by You and Done by turning the empty field into
[7:34] Speaker 1: a carbon capture and storage project. Here's Dina Rui from Jubilee, Australia.
[7:41] Speaker 7: So what they want to do is they want to
[7:43] Speaker 7: pipe the gas from the Barossa gas field to Darwin,
[7:48] Speaker 7: extract the CEO two and then pipe the gas for
[7:53] Speaker 7: five hundred kilometers out to the biol and Done facilities.
[7:57] Speaker 8: Again.
[7:59] Speaker 1: At santos recent Annual General Meeting, the Chair of the Board,
[8:02] Speaker 1: Keith Spence, described the proposal as a bold plan to
[8:06] Speaker 1: repurpose bio Undan facilities for carbon capture and storage after
[8:10] Speaker 1: gas production ceases. Spence said by Undan could store up
[8:14] Speaker 1: to ten million tons of CO two per year, including
[8:17] Speaker 1: two point three million tons of CO two from the Barossa,
[8:21] Speaker 1: which Santos claims would make the Barosa one of the
[8:23] Speaker 1: lowest carbon gas projects in the world. Santos says it's
[8:28] Speaker 1: already had expressions of interest from commercial customers in South
[8:31] Speaker 1: Korea and Japan who want to store their CO two
[8:34] Speaker 1: at Bayou Undan. Gas from the Barossa will be exported
[8:38] Speaker 1: to countries including Japan and Korea, but the South Korean
[8:42] Speaker 1: organization Solutions for Our Climate has launched a court case
[8:45] Speaker 1: claiming that claims about the Barosa project and carbon capture
[8:49] Speaker 1: and storage amount to greenwashing. Here's Don Jay, a researcher
[8:54] Speaker 1: with Solutions for.
[8:55] Speaker 9: Our Climate, especially with the barski A projects. Their claim
[9:02] Speaker 9: is that it would use carbon capture and storage also
[9:06] Speaker 9: called a CCS technology in the production stage, but according
[9:11] Speaker 9: to their plan, assuming it even worse, they will only
[9:15] Speaker 9: capture about sixteen percent of the total projected amount of emissions.
[9:20] Speaker 9: On top of that, they plan to compress carbon dioxide
[9:24] Speaker 9: and transport this over nine hundred kilometers of pipeline, which
[9:30] Speaker 9: would actually end up producing so much emission that so
[9:34] Speaker 9: much additional emission that it would negate the entire purpose
[9:39] Speaker 9: of adding CCS.
[9:46] Speaker 1: Solutions for Our Climate are also concerned that the Korean
[9:49] Speaker 1: government is underwriting fossil fuel expansion in Australia through its
[9:53] Speaker 1: Export Credit Agency.
[9:55] Speaker 9: Our governments gave about one hundred and twenty seven billion
[10:00] Speaker 9: dollars for the last ten years to the overseas oil
[10:03] Speaker 9: and gas projects.
[10:04] Speaker 1: Even if Santos's claims that Bayou and Done can store
[10:08] Speaker 1: ten million tons of CO two per year are true,
[10:12] Speaker 1: its proposal to store CO two underwater hundreds of kilometers
[10:16] Speaker 1: out to see is much more logistically complicated than other
[10:20] Speaker 1: more simple carbon capture and storage projects that have failed
[10:23] Speaker 1: to meet their targets.
[10:25] Speaker 7: And as we know, CSS is an improven and very
[10:30] Speaker 7: expensive technology and it doesn't really work at a large scale,
[10:34] Speaker 7: and this has actually never been done at an offshore
[10:37] Speaker 7: facility like biot in them before. So again Sentus is
[10:42] Speaker 7: just using CCS as a green washing tool to push
[10:45] Speaker 7: through one of the dirtiest gas projects in Australia and
[10:48] Speaker 7: possibly the world.
[10:49] Speaker 1: RUI says Barassa has yet to be drilled because it
[10:52] Speaker 1: has much higher concentrations of CO two than other fields
[10:56] Speaker 1: in the Team or C.
[10:58] Speaker 7: So the Barissa gas field is one of the dirtiest
[11:01] Speaker 7: gas projects in the world. It has double the amount
[11:05] Speaker 7: of CO two at eighteen percent, of any other offshore
[11:10] Speaker 7: Australian gas fields currently in operation. And this is important
[11:16] Speaker 7: because the Barossa gas is supposed to be piped to
[11:19] Speaker 7: Darwin LNG and this is actually, so eighteen percent is
[11:25] Speaker 7: three times the CO two content that the Darwin LNG
[11:29] Speaker 7: facility can actually handle. So what Sentas is planning to do,
[11:34] Speaker 7: and they've said this themselves, is to vent two thirds
[11:37] Speaker 7: of the CO two from the Barissa field directly into
[11:41] Speaker 7: the atmosphere before the gas is even piped into Darwin.
[11:46] Speaker 7: And if you look at how much LNG that the
[11:50] Speaker 7: Barissa Gas will actually produce, it will produce more emissions
[11:55] Speaker 7: than LNG. So the Barissa Gas is going to produce
[11:59] Speaker 7: three point seven million tons of LNGI every year at
[12:03] Speaker 7: the same time as it's going to produce five point
[12:06] Speaker 7: four million tons of CO two emissions every year.
[12:10] Speaker 1: The high CO two concentration at Barossa hasn't deterred Santos,
[12:14] Speaker 1: which also plans to build hundreds of kilometers of underwater
[12:17] Speaker 1: pipes so that it can send the gas from the
[12:19] Speaker 1: Barosco field to Darwin, where it plans to take some
[12:23] Speaker 1: of the CO two out before piping it into another
[12:26] Speaker 1: part of the tim Or Sea for storage at Bayoundan.
[12:30] Speaker 1: The new Barossa pipeline would pass through nesting areas for turtles.
[12:35] Speaker 6: To lay the pipeline through that area.
[12:39] Speaker 8: Literally you have a giant pipeline ship which is up
[12:42] Speaker 8: to sixty five meters high. It has a big light
[12:45] Speaker 8: at the top which is super bright. They measure the
[12:48] Speaker 8: brightness in intensities of full moons to quin idea of
[12:53] Speaker 8: how bright this thing is. And that's obviously going to
[12:55] Speaker 8: have an impact on turtle nesting it and also baby
[12:58] Speaker 8: turtles that hatch and come off the beach, because turtles
[13:01] Speaker 8: are attracted to light, and you may end up a
[13:04] Speaker 8: situation where baby turtles are all rushing towards the plipeline
[13:07] Speaker 8: ship and accumulating in the in the light spill area
[13:12] Speaker 8: behind the ship, and this means that they're up and
[13:14] Speaker 8: bright lights.
[13:15] Speaker 1: Santos has said that it can manage these risks. For Santos,
[13:20] Speaker 1: the plan means that not only can they tell investors
[13:22] Speaker 1: that the Barossa gas project will have low ZO two emissions,
[13:27] Speaker 1: they can also keep the bayoundun field open longer. But
[13:31] Speaker 1: logistics aren't the only issue with this proposal, as Shiner
[13:34] Speaker 1: from the Timeris Think Tank Laohamma took points out, while
[13:38] Speaker 1: Barossa is in the Australian part of the tim or C,
[13:41] Speaker 1: the twenty nineteen agreement between tim O Leste and Australia
[13:45] Speaker 1: recognize that Bayundan was in Timur's waters.
[13:48] Speaker 5: The boundary agreement that Australia finally reluctantly signed was delayed
[13:56] Speaker 5: until biohen was almost then.
[13:58] Speaker 1: So Bayoundan well store the CO two from another field
[14:02] Speaker 1: in Australian waters after it's been returned to tim or Leste,
[14:06] Speaker 1: a country with a much smaller carbon emissions per person
[14:09] Speaker 1: than Australia. Safety commissioning in the t or Se also
[14:14] Speaker 1: remains a local environmental issue, with the effects of a
[14:17] Speaker 1: two thousand and nine oil spill still being filled.
[14:28] Speaker 7: Local communities there are still dealing with the legacy of
[14:31] Speaker 7: the Mantara oil spill in two thousand and nine, which
[14:36] Speaker 7: that meaged the liblorhoods of thousands of seamed farmers.
[14:41] Speaker 1: Santo's plan to store CO two at bay Undan means
[14:44] Speaker 1: that it would potentially make more money from the facility
[14:47] Speaker 1: before paying decommissioning costs. However, Shiner also notes that this
[14:52] Speaker 1: potentially just delays these costs.
[14:55] Speaker 5: The decommissioning is a different issue. I mean decommissioning you're
[14:58] Speaker 5: dealing with all of the toxic chemicals with the oil.
[15:01] Speaker 5: It can still leak out with whatever other things that
[15:04] Speaker 5: are on the side rusting metal structures and whatever. And
[15:10] Speaker 5: that's a local danger. The CO two is a global danger.
[15:13] Speaker 5: The CO two adds to the garment in the atmosphere,
[15:17] Speaker 5: adds to global climate change.
[15:19] Speaker 1: After the Northern Endeavor was left rusting in the tm
[15:21] Speaker 1: or C, the Australian government regulator began to tighten up
[15:25] Speaker 1: rules around decommissioning. Since tighter regulations were introduced, Santos is
[15:30] Speaker 1: not the only company to propose carbon capture and storage
[15:33] Speaker 1: as an option for an old offshore field, but carbon
[15:37] Speaker 1: capture and storage isn't the only way that companies have
[15:40] Speaker 1: been finding creative ways to decommission offshore projects.
[15:45] Speaker 10: Which I had had a mooring out there, a rhizotart mooring,
[15:49] Speaker 10: and it had kept this rhizo tart mooring in such
[15:52] Speaker 10: disrepair that it was unable to well purportedly unable to
[15:57] Speaker 10: bring it on shore for disposal, and as a consequence,
[16:04] Speaker 10: Woodside proposed to basically pick up this two and a
[16:09] Speaker 10: half thousand ton piece of metal and plastic and tell
[16:13] Speaker 10: it about a kilometer away from Ninglu World Heritage Area
[16:17] Speaker 10: listed reef and leave it there to create what they
[16:21] Speaker 10: called an integrated artificial reef.
[16:24] Speaker 1: A recent freedom of information request from the Australian Conservation
[16:27] Speaker 1: Foundation found that the Australian Department of Agriculture, Water and
[16:32] Speaker 1: Environment had expressed concerns about Woodside's plan to decommission one
[16:35] Speaker 1: of its offshore oil rigs by dumping it near a
[16:39] Speaker 1: World Heritage listed coral reef. This is Anikashu, a researcher
[16:44] Speaker 1: with the Australian Conservation Foundation.
[16:46] Speaker 10: There was language like this. Some of the chemicals, for example,
[16:53] Speaker 10: in the Riser Turret mooring are highly acutely toxic to
[16:56] Speaker 10: aquatic organisms. They couldn't rule out risk to human health.
[17:00] Speaker 10: Another thing that was raised by the Department was twelve
[17:03] Speaker 10: point four tons of plastic which would be leached into
[17:07] Speaker 10: the environment and probably consumed by turtles and marine animals
[17:12] Speaker 10: in the receiving area. The department themselves described it as
[17:16] Speaker 10: questionable and it was really nice to see public servants
[17:21] Speaker 10: giving Frank and feelus advice and the Environment Department doing
[17:24] Speaker 10: its job and that is coming to a really tough
[17:28] Speaker 10: but fair interim decision on the matter. Basically, they contacted
[17:33] Speaker 10: the company and said we are intending to reject this.
[17:38] Speaker 10: We think it's contrary to international law on sea dumping,
[17:41] Speaker 10: and there are a number of other bits of information
[17:44] Speaker 10: that go against and then the company decided to withdraw
[17:47] Speaker 10: the application.
[17:48] Speaker 1: Yeah. Despite Woodside's record on decommissioning, Shoe notes that it
[17:52] Speaker 1: has recently purchased more aging off short assets to the
[17:55] Speaker 1: southeast of Australia in the bas Street. Two weeks before
[17:59] Speaker 1: the the Morrison government quietly released a report detailing the
[18:04] Speaker 1: extent of another mass bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef.
[18:08] Speaker 10: Yeah, it's extremely ironic, isn't it, I think? Yeah. I mean,
[18:11] Speaker 10: you could dump a shopping trolley in the ocean and
[18:14] Speaker 10: something will live in it. But is that the same
[18:17] Speaker 10: kind of biodiversity that you see at Ninglo Reef? No,
[18:21] Speaker 10: that is virtually impossible. These hard coral reefs are irreplaceable
[18:27] Speaker 10: and have huge benefits and serve human life and all
[18:32] Speaker 10: other forms of life on this planet.
[18:35] Speaker 1: Before calling the election, the Morrison government announced a further
[18:38] Speaker 1: round of funding for new technologies and the expansion of
[18:41] Speaker 1: gas projects around the country. Australia's gas exports have grown
[18:46] Speaker 1: significantly in the past ten years, yet this didn't stop
[18:49] Speaker 1: the government from promoting itself with a multi million dollar
[18:52] Speaker 1: green washing ad in the lead up to the election.
[18:54] Speaker 3: Australia's making positive energy and there's more on the way.
[18:58] Speaker 3: We've put solar panels here, here and there. In fact,
[19:01] Speaker 3: more than one in four homes have solar may oh,
[19:03] Speaker 3: that's a nice lake. Nice because it's also a battery,
[19:06] Speaker 3: storing energy for our fish tanks and hairdoos. Looking good.
[19:10] Speaker 3: We're investing billions in projects like hydrogen harbs its seaweed
[19:13] Speaker 3: for fee, which means thousands more jobs and even less
[19:17] Speaker 3: emissions because what we do today will define how tomorrow.
[19:22] Speaker 3: Authorized by the Austraian Government camera.
[19:25] Speaker 1: In contrast to the environmental impacts of climate change the
[19:28] Speaker 1: Australians have seen since the last election, the ads were
[19:31] Speaker 1: bright and upbeat.
[19:32] Speaker 11: Well, the positive energy campaign looks like a children's TV program.
[19:37] Speaker 11: It's got green rolling hills, trees, cows and flying scooters.
[19:43] Speaker 11: It uses big bold graphics, fun quirky and it's forward
[19:49] Speaker 11: focused and positive. The campaign is basically everything the Australian
[19:53] Speaker 11: government isn't.
[19:55] Speaker 1: Belinda Noble from Comms to Claire says that the positive
[19:58] Speaker 1: energy ad campaign was unusual even for the Australian government
[20:02] Speaker 1: under Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Who has a background in marketing.
[20:07] Speaker 11: The terms clean hydrogen and positive energy. The use of
[20:12] Speaker 11: those terms is a deliberate strategy by the government to
[20:15] Speaker 11: misinform the public about what they really want to do,
[20:18] Speaker 11: which is to continue to be one of the world's
[20:22] Speaker 11: top exporters of fossil fuels.
[20:24] Speaker 1: The ads referred specifically to government investments in so called
[20:28] Speaker 1: clean hydrogen, but a closer look at the website which
[20:32] Speaker 1: accompanied the Positive Energy ad campaign included more details about
[20:36] Speaker 1: what the government meant by clean hydrogen and how it's
[20:39] Speaker 1: connected to carbon capture and storage. The website says carbon
[20:43] Speaker 1: capture use and storage allows Australian coll and gas to
[20:47] Speaker 1: be transformed into clean hydrogen, and that carbon capture use
[20:51] Speaker 1: and storage can permanently cut emissions from a range of sectors.
[20:55] Speaker 1: If you listen to our last episode from Australia, you
[20:58] Speaker 1: would have also heard how these plans for an industrial
[21:01] Speaker 1: help on the lands of the Larikia people will include
[21:04] Speaker 1: factories that will turn gas into plastics and other petrochemical
[21:08] Speaker 1: products from frecking on indigenous lands. Despite the Australian government's
[21:13] Speaker 1: optimism for carbon capture and storage to date, researchers say
[21:17] Speaker 1: that even some of the world's most ambitious and expensive
[21:19] Speaker 1: carbon capture and storage projects have only stored relatively small
[21:24] Speaker 1: amounts of CO two, usually much less than the projects
[21:27] Speaker 1: were supposed to hold, and unlike the plants that bay Undan,
[21:31] Speaker 1: these projects weren't hundreds of kilometers away from the initial
[21:34] Speaker 1: source of CO two via underwater pipes.
[21:37] Speaker 5: But the CO two will have to still be contained
[21:41] Speaker 5: in that that side, if it's stored there, and this
[21:44] Speaker 5: is underground, underwater. It's captured and stored very well by
[21:49] Speaker 5: the rocks under the tmor C. They've held it for
[21:51] Speaker 5: hundreds and millions of years, so to take it out
[21:53] Speaker 5: and then put someone it back is a bit crazy
[21:57] Speaker 5: that side, if it's stored there and this is underground, underwar.
[22:01] Speaker 1: As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, positive
[22:05] Speaker 1: energy for a changing world was also strangely the theme
[22:08] Speaker 1: of the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association's conference, which
[22:13] Speaker 1: attracted speakers from both major parties just a few days
[22:16] Speaker 1: before the election.
[22:18] Speaker 11: Yes, quite the coincidence that the gas lobby is using
[22:23] Speaker 11: the same language as the Australian government, and that's the
[22:27] Speaker 11: language of positive energy.
[22:30] Speaker 1: After years of increasingly severe fires, floods and heat waves.
[22:34] Speaker 1: Many Australians don't share these same positive feelings towards climate change.
[22:39] Speaker 1: The Labour Party has taken a muted approach to climate
[22:42] Speaker 1: change to the election, a few years after the mining
[22:44] Speaker 1: industry and Rupert Murdoch's News Corps led a backlash against
[22:48] Speaker 1: Labour's more ambitious climate policies. This election will not only
[22:53] Speaker 1: determine which major party will form government, but will also
[22:56] Speaker 1: show how many Australians are ready to walk away from
[22:59] Speaker 1: the major parties as they continue to support fossil fuel expansion.

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