The Australian Vitality 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 known as the WA Gasoline Assertion of Alternatives (GSOO). Little question the massive gasoline corporations will leap on this crying for extra gasoline provide to plug the power 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 power wants? Particularly when a cleaner, cheaper different exists.
The truth is that gasoline doesn’t should be changed by gasoline. The power panorama is altering quickly, and with fossil fuels like gasoline clearly on the decline globally, all funding from right here on should be directed to renewable based mostly options.
In fact there must be a gasoline part out interval to permit for the transition to renewables however to counsel opening up new fossil gas developments when now we have all of the cheaper non-polluting options at hand is to run instantly towards our personal pursuits as a state, to not point out as a species.
Can we neglect that final summer season each coral ecosystem from north of the Kimberley right down to the Ningaloo suffered main bleaching and mortality? Or that our south west forests began dying within the warmth the summer season prior?
Can we not realise that batteries are already outperforming gasoline in our electrical energy grid and that renewable power backed by batteries is the most affordable possibility for brand spanking new power?
To be blunt; gasoline is the issue, not the reply.
Unbiased modelling commissioned by Greenpeace Australia Pacific reveals that there isn’t a want for extra gasoline to fulfill WA’s power wants if the deployment of renewable power continues to collect tempo.
This isn’t based mostly on fanciful beliefs however on detailed modelling of a whole lot of information factors from power services and emissions reporting throughout the state, together with from AEMO itself.
On condition 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 must always turn into a renewable powerhouse, it’s preposterous that extra polluting gasoline may presumably be touted as a viable possibility for WA.
Definitely the transition will take time and our mannequin reveals that whereas gasoline isn’t set to vanish from the system instantaneously, it may possibly steadily diminish over the approaching decade.
What is completely clear proper now’s 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 surroundings, but additionally to the economic system.
This week, the Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers in his mid-year financial replace highlighted that pure catastrophe aid would value $6.3b greater than beforehand deliberate. That’s the actuality of local weather air pollution coming house to roost. In keeping with IAG, the Australian insurance coverage business 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, might be added straight onto our insurance coverage premiums.
The price of letting the fossil gas business run rampant is mounting and can solely proceed to develop.
Moreover, if we permit the gasoline business to delay WA’s transition to renewable power, we danger lacking the chance to turn into a frontrunner within the increasing world markets for inexperienced commodities.
The projections from AEMO shouldn’t be interpreted as a prescription for extra gasoline, however as a sign to the power market extra broadly. The stress factors rising within the system exist as a result of now we have not moved ahead quick sufficient, and the options mustn’t comply with the outdated, polluting script. The truth is that batteries and renewable power are already outperforming coal, gasoline and diesel as a result of they’re cheaper to run and sooner to deploy. There are some spectacular examples of this, together with the Bellevue Gold mining working off 80% renewable power however different components of WA’s mining and heavy business must 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 business… world carbon emissions discount targets, 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 hold approving new industrial developments, just like the Perdaman urea plant close to Karratha, with out clear timetables for renewable power use to energy operations.
What must occur is for large 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 power, and for the State Authorities to proceed enhancing the rollout charges of enormous scale renewable power and batteries.
Bear in mind – Western Australia on no account has a gasoline scarcity. WA is awash with gasoline that continues to drive our emissions within the fallacious path.
Western Australia doesn’t want anymore polluting gasoline. The pathway is obvious – renewables and batteries are already proving themselves as winners, we simply must get extra winners within the race.
