Lock the Gate Alliance is calling on the Albanese Government to reject a new high pressure polluting gas pipeline APA Group wants to build that would connect to a yet to be built, publicly-funded $300 million gas fired power plant.
APA wants to construct twin 23.5 km high pressure pipelines to connect the existing Roma to Brisbane pipeline to the QLD Government-proposed CS Energy Brigalow Peaking Power Plant on the Western Downs. APA’s application under federal environmental laws is here.
However the status of the Brigalow Peaking Power Plant appears to be a mystery, after it was withdrawn from federal assessment in July, one month after the then Miles Labor Government allocated $306 million to the project in the state budget.
APA’s application for its pipeline shows the project would impact habitat likely home to a number of threatened species including the endangered koala (55 hectares of habitat). Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek is expected to make a decision before January 13.
Lock the Gate Alliance QLD spokesperson Claire Gronow said given the pipeline and power station were dependent on one another, it was not appropriate for the federal government to assess them as separate projects.
“Assessing this project on a piece by piece basis will not give decision makers a full understanding of its impacts on matters of national environmental significance, which is the intent of the EPBC Act,” Dr Gronow said.
“Among other issues, both projects are likely to threaten habitat home to endangered koalas. That fact alone means the full impacts of both the pipeline and Brigalow Power Station need to be understood holistically.
“Coal seam gas developments have sliced and diced forests and farmland on the Western Downs; the region is now pincushioned with wells, pipelines, and access roads. Yet still gas companies and governments want to destroy more.
“It’s a disgrace that more than $300 million of taxpayer funds have been allocated to a fossil gas plant that has not even been properly assessed yet. Government claims that it may someday run on hydrogen are little more than a pipedream.
“Gas is not a transition fuel, it is a fossil fuel that is driving dangerous global warming. Recent studies show that in some cases it can be at least, if not more than, as polluting as coal.
“Governments should be doubling down on clean energy alternatives, not backing more polluting fossil gas that is adding fuel to the climate crisis and creating more extreme weather events.”
ENDS