The Australian Power Market Operator has simply launched its annual projections of anticipated gasoline provide and demand for Western Australia with claims that shortages are imminent. It’s referred to as the WA Fuel Assertion of Alternatives (GSOO). Little question the large gasoline firms will bounce on this crying for extra gasoline provide to plug the vitality hole that they created.
How is it that in 2025 after all of the warnings from scientists and world leaders, after all of the fires, floods, cyclones and heatwaves we’re nonetheless trying to a fossil gas as damaging as methane for our vitality wants? Particularly when a cleaner, cheaper various exists.
The fact is that gasoline doesn’t must be changed by gasoline. The vitality panorama is altering quickly, and with fossil fuels like gasoline clearly on the decline globally, all funding from right here on have to be directed to renewable based mostly options.
After all there must be a gasoline section out interval to permit for the transition to renewables however to counsel opening up new fossil gas developments when we have now all of the cheaper non-polluting options at hand is to run immediately towards our personal pursuits as a state, to not point out as a species.
Can we overlook that final summer time each coral ecosystem from north of the Kimberley all the way down to the Ningaloo suffered main bleaching and mortality? Or that our south west forests began dying within the warmth the summer time prior?
Can we not realise that batteries are already outperforming gasoline in our electrical energy grid and that renewable vitality backed by batteries is the most affordable choice for brand new vitality?
Fuel shouldn’t be the reply
Unbiased modelling commissioned by Greenpeace Australia Pacific reveals that there isn’t any want for extra gasoline to fulfill WA’s vitality wants if the deployment of renewable vitality continues to assemble tempo.
This isn’t based mostly on fanciful beliefs however on detailed modelling of lots of of knowledge factors from vitality services and emissions reporting throughout the state, together with from AEMO itself.
Provided that Australia simply signed the Belém Declaration for the Transition Away From Fossil Fuels, and that the WA Premier Roger Cook dinner has repeatedly signalled that we should always develop into a renewable powerhouse, it’s preposterous that extra polluting gasoline might presumably be touted as a viable choice for WA.
Definitely the transition will take time and our mannequin reveals that whereas gasoline shouldn’t be set to vanish from the system instantaneously, it will probably steadily diminish over the approaching decade.
What is totally clear proper now could be that gasoline use can’t be allowed to broaden. The dangers are just too nice. Not solely the dangers to the local weather, to our well being, and to our pristine atmosphere, but additionally to the economic system.
This week, the Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers in his mid-year financial replace highlighted that pure catastrophe reduction would price $6.3b greater than beforehand deliberate. That’s the actuality of local weather air pollution coming house to roost. In response to IAG, the Australian insurance coverage trade has paid $22.5 billion in insured prices for excessive climate occasions over the previous 5 years. We all know the price of fossil gas induced disasters, pushed by the extraction and burning of gasoline, can be added straight onto our insurance coverage premiums.
The prices of the fossil gas trade will solely proceed to develop
Moreover, if we permit the gasoline trade to delay WA’s transition to renewable vitality, we threat lacking the chance to develop into a frontrunner within the increasing international markets for inexperienced commodities.
The projections from AEMO shouldn’t be interpreted as a prescription for extra gasoline, however as a sign to the vitality market extra broadly. The stress factors rising within the system exist as a result of we have now not moved ahead quick sufficient, and the options shouldn’t comply with the outdated, polluting script. The fact is that batteries and renewable vitality are already outperforming coal, gasoline and diesel as a result of they’re cheaper to run and quicker to deploy. There are some spectacular examples of this, together with the Bellevue Gold mining working off 80% renewable vitality however different components of WA’s mining and heavy trade have to catch up.
One of many different, much less heralded statements Australia signed as much as in Brazil was the Belém Declaration on World Inexperienced Industrialization which states that “with out deep emissions cuts from heavy trade… international carbon emissions discount objectives, in keeping with the Paris Settlement, can’t be met”.
That is the place the rubber hits the street in WA, or maybe, the place the solar hits the photo voltaic panel. Western Australia can not preserve approving new industrial developments, just like the Perdaman urea plant close to Karratha, with out clear timetables for renewable vitality use to energy operations.
What must occur is for giant gasoline customers like Alcoa, Wesfarmers and Perdaman to comply with the lead of a few of WA’s miners by placing extra funding into electrifying their operations to run off renewable vitality, and for the State Authorities to proceed enhancing the rollout charges of huge scale renewable vitality and batteries.
Bear in mind – Western Australia under no circumstances has a gasoline scarcity. WA is awash with gasoline that continues to drive our emissions within the unsuitable route.
Western Australia doesn’t want anymore polluting gasoline. The pathway is obvious – renewables and batteries are already proving themselves as winners, we simply have to get extra winners within the race.
