(AU ABC) How Satellites Are Challenging Australia's Official Greenhouse Gas Emission Figures

ABC News - Steve Cannane

Queensland's Bowen Basin has a similar carbon footprint to countries like Austria, new research has shown.(Reuters: James Regan)

Key Points Methane is more potent than carbon dioxide It is responsible for more than 30 per cent of global warming to date Australia did not sign up to a COP26 commitment to reduce methane levels by 30 per cent by 2030

Inside a shared workspace for technology start-ups in south-west London, Christian Lelong has a bird's-eye view of some of the dirtiest secrets of Australia's mining industry.

Using satellite imagery from the European Space Agency combined with meteorological data and atmospheric models, Mr Lelong, the director of natural resources at geospatial analytics firm Kayrros, has been able to measure methane leaks from the fossil fuel industry around the world.

What he has found above Queensland's coal-rich Bowen Basin raises serious questions about whether Australia has been accurately reporting its greenhouse gas emissions to international bodies.

"We found that emissions for all the 50-odd mines in that basin in total add up to about 1.5 million tonnes of methane per year," Mr Lelong told the ABC.

According to federal government figures for the same period, only a third of that amount of methane was reported in the area.

If accurate, Kayrros's data portrays an extraordinary picture of the potential impact Australia's coal industry is having on the Earth's atmosphere.

A map provided by Kayrros shows the distribution of methane hotspots detected in Australia since 2019 and associated with coal mining. (Supplied: Kayrros/Sentinel-5P data)

"These numbers [in the Bowen Basin] are the equivalent of the total carbon footprint of a medium-sized European country like Austria or the Czech Republic," Mr Lelong said.

In the fight to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius, methane matters. It is far more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2) and is responsible for around 30 per cent of global warming to date.

Typically, methane leaks occur from coal mines, oil and gas wells and natural gas pipelines.

Reducing these leaks helps buy the planet time to get other greenhouse gas emissions under control and is one of the easiest ways to reduce emissions.

At the global climate change summit COP26, over 100 nations signed a pledge to reduce methane levels by 30 per cent by 2030. 

Australia's government did not sign the agreement, and the opposition Labor party has no plans to sign up to the pledge if it wins at the next election.


New data suggests Australia could be underreporting methane gas emissions from coal mines. 3min 33sec

The Australian government doesn't want Christian Lelong's help

Mr Lelong knows the Australian mining industry well

He worked for BHP for seven years before joining Goldman Sachs as a commodities analyst. Now he wants to help the Australian energy sector reduce its methane emissions.

Christian Lelong is the director of natural resources at geospatial analytics firm Kayrros. (ABC News: Dan Loh)

He has approached the federal government through the Department of Energy and offered to share his company's knowledge and expertise. That offer has not been taken up.

Greens environment spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young met with Mr Lelong at COP26 in Glasgow and cannot understand why Australian officials are not jumping at the chance to use the technology.

"The Prime Minister says that they want a technology solution to climate change," Senator Hanson-Young said.

"Well, here we have incredible data satellite technology.

"We could pinpoint exactly where these leaks of pollution are happening and hold the companies accountable if he was just willing to listen.”

When the ABC approached Energy Minister Angus Taylor for comment, his office referred the matter to the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources.

A spokesperson for the department said: "The Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources is developing a National Greenhouse Account Methane Monitoring System using Sentinel data to assess the implications of methane releases for the preparation of Australia's next National Greenhouse Accounts and is not looking for data analytic services from London."

The spokesperson also said that "the department believes, like the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], that it is premature to use the satellite data to quantify emissions directly".

Mr Lelong disputed that and said that view was expressed in the IPCC's 2019 report before it had evaluated modern satellites.

Australia snubs pledge
to cut methane emissions

Australia snubs one of the key global actions to come out of the UN climate change conference by bowing out of an international pledge to reduce methane emissions. Read more

"Now we have a new generation of satellites, it changes everything," he said.

"They are much more accurate and precise."

However, the Department of Energy insists the Kayrros data "has not yet been well-verified by ground stations or more targeted studies" and that its approach "lacks transparency ... and would not be acceptable under the Paris Agreement".

That has not stopped the UN's new International Methane Emissions Observatory from working with Kayrros.

It told the ABC it was collaborating with the company and planned to use its tools and analytics in the coming months.

Dutch scientists raise further doubts about Australian emissions reporting 

A peer-reviewed paper published this week by a group of Dutch scientists raises similar concerns about Australia's publicly released greenhouse gas figures.

It analysed data from satellite imagery of six coal mines in the Bowen Basin and found they were emitting much more methane than would be expected from what Australia is reporting.

Ilse Aben, who was the lead researcher on the paper, told the ABC that by studying emissions from the Hail Creek mine, run by Glencore, you could see that the figures did not add up.

Hail Creek coal mine lies in the heart of coal country in Queensland's Bowen Basin, 125 kilometres south-west of Mackay. (ABC News: Louisa Rebgetz)

"For Hail Creek, which is a surface mine, we found that it's actually responsible for roughly 20 per cent of the methane emissions, as reported by Australia for the total of all coal mines," she said.

"It is one surface mine and there are 73 surface mines in Australia.

“If this one mine already gives a 20 per cent contribution, then it is unlikely that the total is right."

A spokesperson for Glencore said in a statement: "It is not credible that a single open cut coal operation is responsible for 20 per cent of the industry's total annual methane emissions."

"Glencore reports emissions in accordance with the Australian National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting (NGERS) regulatory measurement criteria. 

"The emissions from our Bowen Basin operations are accounted for in Glencore’s robust climate change targets. These targets include a 15 per cent reduction in total (including Scope 3) emissions by 2026; a 50 per cent reduction in total emissions by 2035 and an ambition to be a net zero total emissions company by 2050."

A satellite measure of methane concentrations in the Bowen Basin, with three identifiable plumes and a zoom in (right) on coal mines located upwind of these plumes. (Supplied: Kayrros/Sentinel-5P data)

Bryce Kelly from the University of NSW, who has led research teams mapping emissions from coal mines, said the Dutch study had undergone extensive peer review.

"There is merit in the results," Dr Kelly said.

"Kayrros's independent studies further support that there are methane anomalies above what would be expected for the region based on reported emissions.

"We now need ground and airborne studies to verify the satellite observations." 

Professor Aben said that while she had not seen Kayrros's results, they had found the emissions from six mines in the area were two times higher than was reported by the mining companies.

"So I'm not totally surprised … it's certainly not contradicting each other," she said.

Industry-supplied figures questioned

Currently, the data relied on by the federal government for its Greenhouse Gas Inventory is provided by mining companies which can then be subject to auditing and review.

The ABC asked BHP and Anglo American, two of the largest coal miners in the area, how they measured methane levels in the Bowen Basin. Neither company provided details.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Anglo American said: "We have invested significantly in methane capture infrastructure, generating enough electricity to power 90,000 Queensland homes every year, and reducing our emissions by about 5 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per annum."

"We are actively working on technology solutions to further reduce methane emissions in our underground metallurgical coal mines as part of our commitment to operate carbon-neutral mines by 2040."

A spokesperson for BHP said: "BHP Mitsubishi Alliance estimates and publicly reports emissions from its Australian operations in accordance with the rigorous requirements of the National Greenhouse and Energy Act."

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said the government should be doing more to measure methane emissions in Australia. (ABC News: Dan Loh)

Senator Hanson-Young questioned whether industry figures supplied to the government were accurate.

"This is just more of how the Morrison government behaves with the fossil fuel industry, hand-in-glove dismiss the independent advice, dismiss the independent data and take the data and the word of the fossil fuel industry," she said.

"I know who I believe."

Links

• Methane Emissions from Super-emitting Coal Mines in Australia quantified using TROPOMI Satellite Observations (pdf)
• Australia refuses to join global pledge led by US and EU to cut methane emissions
• Methane emissions are driving climate change. Here’s how to reduce them.
• Australia joins China, Russia, India and Iran in refusing to join global pledge to cut methane emissions
• Methane emissions higher than earlier estimates in CSG region
• Nations reach climate deal at COP26 after compromise on coal

(Business Insider) Green Energy Is Rapidly Nearing A Turning Point. To Combat Climate Change, Our Leaders Need To Point To A Cleaner, Cheaper Tomorrow.

Business Insider Australia - Paul Constant

Environmental activists protest climate change on Indigenous Peoples Day, outside the White House in October. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

For decades, our conversation about climate change has been stunted by mixed signals.

Our elected leaders’ speeches aim high, with lofty talk about coming together to avert calamity, but their policies fail to address the scale of the crisis.

Now, with most parts of the country regularly experiencing extreme weather events, nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the government should do more to combat climate change — but world leaders still failed to take dramatic action to limit the global rise of temperatures at the COP26 climate conference convened by the United Nations this fall.

On the latest episode of Pitchfork Economics, two professors at the Institute of New Economics at Oxford University, Erick Beinhocker and Doyne Farmer, join Nick Hanauer to address the flaws in the way we discuss the problems of, and solutions to, climate change.

“We’ve had the wrong economic ideas about how climate change is framed,” Beinhocker explains.

As an example of this flawed thinking, he cites the the Nobel Prize-winning work of Yale economist William Nordhaus, which has warned since the 1990s “that it’s going to be very expensive and costly to transition from our fossil fuel economy to a clean energy economy, but those costs have to be weighed against the benefits of avoiding an ecological collapse and potential mass extinction event.”

Nordhaus’s models have helped frame the conversation about climate change as a negative one. We’ve been told since the dawn of the modern environmental movement in the 1990s that saving the planet will cost us all a great deal in profits, convenience, and quality of life.

Environmental advocacy groups often explain their policies in terms of what ordinary people will have to give up, both financially and in terms of convenience, in order to save the planet.

New research indicates that this punitive, eat-your-spinach style of thinking may be completely wrong.

“We think that converting to renewables, and doing so reasonably quickly within a span of about 20 years, is going to save the world money,” Farmer says. “It’s going to make energy cheaper for us, as well as evading climate change.”

Farmer participates in one of the two major academic groups researching rates of technological advancement, and the indicators point to a fast-growing future for affordable green energy.

While green energy keeps getting cheaper, fossil fuels and their attendant costs have remained basically flat for nearly a century and a half.

If solar, wind, and hydrogen power continue to stay on their current development path for another decade or two, and if battery storage capacity continues to improve as well, green energy will overtake fossil fuels to become the world’s dominant power source.

“We’re going to see energy cheaper than it’s ever been” in the history of the world, Farmer predicts.

“We still have a long way to go,” Beinhocker warns. “Only about 20 percent of global energy is from non-fossil fuels today, and 80 percent from fossil fuels. But the growth [of green energy] has been extraordinary.”

Beinhocker says that renewable energy capacity increased by 45 percent in 2020, making it “the only energy source to actually grow during the pandemic, and 90 percent of new power additions in the world now in the electrical sector are from renewables.”

The global switch to green energy is nearing “a tipping point,” he says, “but it’s a race against the clock.”

This research, though, should mark a significant change in the conversation about climate change.

Rather than focusing on punitive policies which make fuel more expensive for the average American, our leaders should instead be investing deeply into research to advance cheap clean technologies, as well as speeding up the construction of green infrastructure, making the adoption of clean fuels more desirable.

As we’ve seen in increased electric vehicle adoption rates around the world, consumers are happy to make the switch to a clean alternative, when they’re presented with an affordable, convenient option.

The evidence is clear: it’s time for the environmental conversation in America to become an additive, positive one, rather than a negative story of sacrifice and punishment.

When it comes to the green economy, it’s no longer about saying no to Exxon; it’s about saying yes to building a faster track to a cleaner, cheaper future for the whole human race.

Links

• 6 takeaways from the U.N. climate conference
• We're Finally Catching a Break in the Climate Fight
• Empirically grounded technology forecasts and the energy transition (pdf)
• Are We on the Brink of an Electric Vehicle Boom? Only with More Action
• Renewable Energy: A key climate solution
• Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation

(AU ABC) Promising Signs Of New Life On Australia's Largest Oceanic Reef, Despite Frequent Heat Stress

ABC News - Tyne Logan

Researchers have observed promising signs of new life on Scott Reef, five years after the global mass bleaching event of 2016. (Supplied: AIMS Shannon Duffy)

Key Points Scientists say Scott Reef is slowly recovering after the 2016 mass bleaching event They have concerns about frequent heatwaves impeding the overall recovery of the reef The findings reflect a pattern around the country

A research trip to Australia's largest oceanic reef system has shown promising signs of new life, following the 2016 mass bleaching event, which impacted coral reefs all over the globe.

But unlike mass bleaching events of the past, scientists are concerned Scott Reef is facing a barrier to its recovery.

Coral ecology research scientist James Gilmour, from the Australian Institute of Marine Science, said repeated, smaller marine heatwaves since the 2016 event were compounding bleaching impacts.

"Unfortunately since 2016 we've seen additional heat stress in 2017, 2019 and 2020," he said.

"We're getting this recurrent heating and stress to the reefs which obviously are going to impede its recovery.

"We see this overlying resilience, but the effects of ongoing heat stress impeding that."

Scott Reef is located in the Timor Sea and consists of three separate reef structures. (Supplied: AIMS Luke Thomas)

Located 200 kilometres to the north-west of Broome, the three reefs are incredibly isolated, a trait Dr Gilmour said made them a good case study in pinpointing the impacts of climate change on Australian reefs.

"Because of its isolation, it doesn't have these additional pressures, such as fishing pressure or the pollution pressure that you see on other reefs that can confound our inferences about what is happening from climate change and coral bleaching," he said.

Case study for climate change impacts

The observations at Scott Reef reflect a dire pattern emerging not only in Australia but around the world.

A major global analysis of coral reefs, released in October, found about 14 per cent of the world's coral, the equivalent of more than all living coral in Australia, had been lost in less than a decade.

It found the main cause of the decline was "recurring large scale coral bleaching events" that were "preventing coral from recovering".

But the analysis also found there was hope, with some corals showing strong, and at times surprising resistance to ongoing heat stress.

Dr James Gilmour said some corals were showing impressive signs of recovery, despite recurring heat stress. (Supplied: AIMS)

University of Western Australia and AIMS research associate Luke Thomas said this was observed on Scott Reef too.

"Considering this reef has gone through three serious bleaching events in the last 20 years, it's just been hammered and hammered over and over... the fact that there's any coral left is a remarkable story and a testament of the system," he said.

Making the most of heat-tolerant corals

Dr Thomas said researchers were trying to utilise this surprising resilience.

"One way is if we know this pocket of reef houses heat resistance corals, let's protect them, let's avoid anchor damage or overfishing," he said.

He said a second way was to breed tolerant coral populations for restoration.

"So if we want to restore a degraded section of reef, we don't want to just replace those corals with ones that will bleach and die the next heatwave," he said.

"We want to replace them with much more fit, tougher individuals.

"So we can target this pocket of heat resistance corals as a broodstock, or a supply for those reefs."

Scientists conducted heat tolerance research while at the Scott Reefs. (Supplied: AIMS Luke Thomas)

The science and restoration work on Scott Reef is similar to that happening on the Great Barrier Reef, with the government kicking in half a billion dollars in 2018 to help deal with the problems facing the Great Barrier Reef.

Glasgow climate talks 'discouraging'

The management and restoration work of corals is crucial to saving reef systems in the future, researchers say, but it comes second to the need to cut down carbon emissions.

James Cook University marine biologist Jodie Rummer said Australia left "a lot to be answered for" after the COP26 conference in Glasgow.

"There was a clear message over the past five years of what increased emissions and climate change have been doing to Australia, let alone the entire world, and we weren't able to stand up to do anything about it."

Marine Biologist Dr Jodie Rummer said the recent climate conference in Glasgow left a lot to be answered for in terms of cutting Australia's carbon emissions. (ABC: Travis Mead)

Dr Rummer said the federal government priorities were wrong.

"Clean economic recovery is win win for Australia," she said.

"This is what needs to be the priority for Australia but for some reason Australia is still prioritising coal, gas and oil exploration.

"This goes in complete conflict with Australia's national priority of protecting people, our ecosystems and natural spaces."

Links

• Great Barrier Reef in 'recovery window' after year without major heatwaves, cyclone disturbances
• New study reveals extent of coral bleaching worldwide, with WA reefs suffering at alarming rate
• (Washington Post) Photos Show Vast Coral Spawning Event In Great Barrier Reef, Giving Divers Hope For Climate Change Recovery
• (USA TIME) UNESCO Says Australia's Great Barrier Reef Isn't In Danger Yet. Many Environmentalists And Divers Disagree
• (AU The Conversation) Not Declaring The Great Barrier Reef As ‘In Danger’ Only Postpones The Inevitable
• (AU SBS) Australia Accused Of ‘Censoring Science’ After Great Barrier Reef Avoids World Heritage ‘In Danger’ Listing
• (AU ABC) Coral Reefs Across The World 'In Danger' As Scientists Note Slowing Calcification
• It Might Be The World’s Biggest Ocean, But The Mighty Pacific Is In Peril
• A Race Against Time To Rescue A Reef From Climate Change