Climate Council: Just Say No To Narrabri Gas Project

Image: Lock The Gate

The Climate Council hasn’t minced words in its submission to the NSW Independent Planning Commission (IPC) on the Narrabri Gas Project.

Santos seeks to construct hundreds of coal seam gas wells within the Narrabri Shire area in the North West Slopes region of New South Wales. The 850 new CSG wells will be dotted across 95,000 hectares in the north eastern part of Pilliga State Forest and adjoining grazing land, and will involve clearing close to 1,000 hectares in a patchwork manner for the wells and connecting lines.

Santos says the project

 “could supply NSW homes, small businesses, major industries and electricity generators with up to half the state’s natural gas needs and bring substantial economic benefits to Narrabri and the region.”

In June, NSW’s Department of Planning Industry and Environment said it considered the project to be in the public interest and is approvable subject to strict conditions.

The Climate Council says the project is not needed; particularly given the havoc it will wreak.

“In 2020, it no longer makes any sense to approve new fossil fuel projects,” says the Climate Council. “Wind and solar are the cheapest form of new electricity generation in Australia. We must accelerate the transition to renewables and storage technologies and new fossil fuel projects will only delay climate responses.”

No Demonstrable Benefit – Plenty Of Risk

Among the concerns highlighted in its submission is the rapid and permanent greenhouse gas emissions reduction required to achieve globally agreed goals mean the project should be rejected on that basis alone.

The Climate Council states data provided by Santos relating to emissions from the Narrabri Gas Project is based on science more than a decade old and on conditions on a different continent. It also says its emissions estimates deviate wildly from other assessments, but as assumptions underpinning Santos’s  assessment haven’t been disclosed, it makes it impossible to point out the errors in calculations.

The Council has also seized on a recently published report from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) indicating Australia can rapidly transition to renewables with no new gas-fired generation.

As for the jobs the Santos project promises, the Climate Council released a report in July stating 15,000 jobs could be created  through installing utility-scale renewable energy facilities, transmission infrastructure and utility-scale batteries across Australia.

Looking more locally, back in 2017 researchers at University of Technology Sydney’s Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF) investigated how many jobs could be created in the region if a focus was put on renewables. It found in one scenario, wind and solar energy projects would create triple the long-term jobs in operation and maintenance compared to the Narrabri Gas Project with one third of the planned gas field investment.

It appears the IPC is going to have a quite a task ahead in reviewing submissions. The Narrabri Gas Project has been one of the most controversial in the history of NSW planning law according to Lock The Gate, which says the project’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) attracted 22,721 submissions, 98% of which were objections.

Lock The Gate says if the Narrabri Gas Project was given the green light, it would be a major threat to groundwater, native fauna and flora, and have many other negative impacts. In relation to emissions, it notes an estimate the project will generate 127.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, or 5 million tonnes a year.

Original Source: https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/narrabri-gas-project-mb1629/