On 19 April 2021 at the Business Council of Australia Annual Dinner Prime Minister Scott Morrison informed the world that; “We are going to meet our ambitions with the smartest minds, the best technology and the animal spirits of our business community. We need to change our energy mix over the next 30 years on that road to net zero emissions…..It will be achieved by the pioneering entrepreneurialism and innovation of Australia’s industrial workhorses, farmers and scientists.
It will be won in places like the Pilbara, the Hunter, Gladstone, Portland, Whyalla, Bell Bay, the Riverina. In the factories of our regional towns and outer suburbs. In the labs of our best research institutes and scientists. It will be won in our energy sector. In our industrial sector. In our ag sector. In our manufacturing sector. That’s how you get to net zero.
It would appear that his first step on this journey is to make a token investment in ‘clean’ energy by way of $539 million in funding for new projects involving hydrogen product and capture & storage, which will apparently be fuelled by both black and brown coal – thereby increasing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions Australia releases into the atmosphere.
This folly was pointed out by ABC News on 21 April 2021:
Getting hydrogen into a pure, useable form takes a lot of energy and this process can produce a lot of emissions.
And so, that is why experts talk about different types of hydrogen — brown, black, grey, blue and green.
Only "green" hydrogen is produced entirely through renewable power and has zero emissions. The others use electricity made by coal (black or brown) or gas (grey), sometimes with carbon capture and storage (blue).
The Government call its hydrogen plans "clean" — a combination of hydrogen from gas and renewables.
The Climate Council says the term is "misleading" for average Australians.
Its website states: "Proponents of fossil-fuelled hydrogen have used this to describe fossil fuel hydrogen linked to carbon capture and storage, as well as renewably sourced hydrogen."
"Only the variety of hydrogen generated with renewables … belongs in our zero emissions future."….
The government insists real progress is being made on CCS technology.
However, many climate scientists believe, when it comes to fossil-fuel energy production, CCS is not a serious alternative to wind and solar power.
Some, like the Climate Council, see it as an attempt to prolong the use of fossil fuels.
"The Gorgon CCS trial has been a big, expensive failure. It is capturing less than half the emissions needed to make CCS viable," the Climate Council's website states.
"CCS is extremely expensive and cannot deliver zero emissions."
"There are still no successful projects operating anywhere in the world."
While The Guardian on April 2021 published these telling quotes:
Harry Guinness, a former Liberal adviser and chief executive of the centre-right thinktank the Blueprint Institute, said the US was planning to spend about 35 times what Australia allocated in the last federal budget on green stimulus, and the government would need to commit to serious finance if Australia was to make a transition to net zero by 2050 as Scott Morrison has said is his preference…..
“Our friends and allies are going to want to see tangible commitments. They’ve been quite clear about that, it’s no mystery,” Guinness said. “If we are in the game of bringing technologies down the cost curve we need finance and incentives, including pricing carbon. Actions speak louder than words.”
Tony Wood, the Grattan Institute’s energy program director, said there was little detail in what the government had announced on Wednesday, making it hard to assess, but that Australia was spending significantly less on hydrogen than some other countries.
He said Australia was also offering support for hydrogen made with fossil fuels where others were backing “green hydrogen” made with renewable energy only.
“I don’t see any evidence that Australia has developed positions that are leading the world,” he said…..
Announcing the funding on Wednesday, Morrison said hydrogen was “zero emissions gas”.
The Greens said as the government planned to support hydrogen made with fossil fuels as well as renewable energy its commitment was “just more cash for coal and gas”. The party’s leader, Adam Bandt, said it paled next to multibillio-dollar green hydrogen commitments by other countries including South Korea, Germany, Spain, France, Japan and Saudi Arabia.
“This government’s obsession with coal and gas is about to cost Australia as other countries invest heavily in green hydrogen, giving them the edge as future markets open up,” Bandt said. “With all our wind and sunshine, this is Australia’s competitive advantage to seize, but it is being lost.”…..
Richie Merzian, the Australia Institute’s climate and energy program director, said it appeared the government was “once again using climate action to support fossil fuel companies”. He said that under current commitments it was possible by 2030 the US would have halved its emissions and the UK cut its emissions by two-thirds but Australia was sitting on a 26% cut while still subsidising fossil fuels…..
I was talking to a public servant climate policy in his portfolio the other day who said 'at least when we were in enviro (dept) we felt like climate policy might relate vaguely to the environment. Now we're just the department for coal and gas. No ones even pretending anymore '
— Polly Hemming (@pollyjhemming) April 21, 2021
Morrison must think the Australian electorate and every OECD government around the world are so monumentally stupid as to not realise that these announcements (and their lack of detail, fuzzy timelines or no guaranteed funding) are solely for the benefit of US President Joe Biden 's two-day virtual Leaders Summit which began on 22 April 2021, with a weather eye out for the twelve-day UN Climate Change Conference (COP 26) to be held in Glasgow during November 2021.
By the time all his half-promises and evasions concerning zero emissions have failed to meet the 2050 target date, Scott Morrison will be 81 years of age and I will be long dead - having lived all my life in a country which only genuinely attempted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for six short years between June 2007 to September 2013.
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