Lock the Gate Alliance has criticised the WA McGowan Government after it announced it was drafting new laws to promote unproven, money wasting, carbon capture and storage technology for the benefit of greedy oil and gas companies.
“Despite decades of private and $4 billion in public spending on CCS since 2003 in Australia, it has not proven itself up to the task of reducing emissions in any meaningful way,” said Lock the Gate Alliance WA coordinator Claire McKinnon.
“Let’s be clear: CCS doesn’t work. It’s a smokescreen used by fossil fuel companies to justify continuing their polluting, climate wrecking projects.
“There are plans by companies like Theia Energy, and Black Mountain to drill many thousands of fracking wells in the Kimberley - what the industry coldly calls the ‘Canning Basin’. This announcement will encourage these companies further in their quest to industrialise this iconic part of our state.
“The gas industry’s flagship CCS project in Australia, located right here in WA and owned by Chevron, has completely failed to deliver on its promises. It received Federal Government handouts to the tune of $60M, but has only injected less than a third of its agreed CO2 target.
“The project failed to store any carbon at all for its first 3.5 years of operation, and the Gorgon plant pumped enough CO2 into the atmosphere just in 2017-18 to wipe out the emissions savings from all rooftop solar in Australia combined.
“CCS also does absolutely nothing to abate the vast amounts of fugitive emissions the gas industry is responsible for.
“It’s irresponsible of the McGowan Government to consider making it easier for oil and gas companies to pollute by giving even more time and public money to failed carbon capture and storage technology.
“Australia needs to urgently cut emissions right now, not waste more time waiting for this fossil fuel industry pipedream. With the climate crisis leading to more frequent and more severe weather disasters, we don’t have any more time to waste.”
ENDS