a so-called technology neutral hybrid
A full 15 months after the 2019 election in which they retained office, the Federal government, still no closer to its emissions reduction destination, changed tack yet again, and came up with a so-called technology neutral hybrid with no specific end-point in sight for achieving a reduction in emissions. On 21 September 2020, Australia’s Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor detailed five low-emissions technologies the Australian government would prioritise for funding:
- clean hydrogen,
- electricity storage technologies,
- low carbon steel and aluminium,
- carbon capture and storage (CCS)
- and soil carbon, sometimes referred to as carbon farming.
However, the plan not only includes "green" hydrogen produced from renewables, but also "blue" hydrogen produced from gas as well as using carbon capture to bury emissions.
Gas is also an essential part of the plan to "help us bridge the gap while our investments in batteries, hydrogen and pumped hydro energy storage bring these technologies to economic parity with traditional energy sources" (Prime Ministerial statement, January 2020). The logic of this lay in a statement by the Chief Scientist the previous May:
"By producing hydrogen from natural gas or coal, using carbon capture and permanent storage, we can add back two more lanes to our energy highway, ensuring we have four primary energy sources to meet the needs of the future – solar, wind, hydrogen from natural gas, and hydrogen from coal. Think for a moment of the vast amounts of steel, aluminium and concrete needed to support, build and service solar and wind structures. What if there was a resources shortage? It would be prudent, therefore, to safeguard against any potential resource limitations with another energy source."
But according to Professor Will Steffen, the founding director of the Australian National University's Climate Change Institute, and a bevy of other reputable climate scientists, the use of gas as a transition energy source was quickly making a bad situation even worse: Australia's Paris climate targets were weak, set politically and had no scientific basis, he said, and even if they were to be met Australia would still not be doing its fair share to mitigate global warming under the agreement, and the use o/f gas was only going to exacerbate the situation. In other words, gas cannot be the answer. Moving from one fossil fuel to another is not a pathway to net-zero emissions and certainly not the panacea it is supposed to be.
Under the Energy Minister's new so-called "technology neutral" plan, in ruling out a tax to reduce emissions, $18 billion over a decade would be spent via the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), the Clean Energy Regulator, the emissions reduction fund and other grants. The spending comprises $1.4 billion from ARENA (which, be it noted, is due to run out of funds in any event 2022), $13 billion from the CEFC, $2.9 billion from the CER and $1 billion from the CSIRO. So-called "stretch goals", or thresholds for each technology, would mark the point at which the new technologies outcompete the high-emissions incumbents.
To achieve his stated objectives, the Minister would need to amend the investment rules at the CEFC and ARENA to allow them to offer loans or grants for carbon capture and storage, a deeply contentious technology, which has been criticised as serving to maintain the fossil fuel industry for a few more years rather than help Australia to rapidly reduce its emissions. Mike Foley puts it in a nutshell: "It's a gas: fossil fuels may get clean energy cash". (The headline appeared only in the paper edition, not online).
Others say the focus on hydrogen energy and carbon capture is appropriate, that the two technologies will become crucial if the world is to begin to meet its targets, but that green hydrogen – hydrogen produced using renewable technologies only, rather than via gas and CCS – will not produce carbon-free energy at the scale and in the timeframe needed. If CCS technology is made commercially viable it could be linked to existing energy and industrial infrastructure, or so it is contended. Green steel has huge potential for reducing Australia's emissions and boosting industrial output, but that could be 20 years away and nations should be aiming to cut their emissions in half by 2030 and in half again by 2040. The same problem presents itself with the untried and untested and highly contentious CCS technology.
Australia’s Chief Scientist, Dr Alan Finkel, who was involved in devising the plan, says it is deliberately technology neutral, the aim being to reduce atmospheric emissions of carbon dioxide or methane into the atmosphere and not to terminate a given technology. Its objective, he says, is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and “whatever technology can do that, most rapidly, and most cost effectively needs to be considered.”
The Morrison government has an economy-wide commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28% on 2005 levels by 2030 but no target beyond that date. Mr Morrison’s talk of reaching net zero at some point in the second half of the century, is in contrast to Labor’s target of net zero by 2050, a commitment replicated by the National Farmers' Federation, GrainGrowers and the red meat industry, to the Government's embarrassment.