Australia’s building boom comes amid $485.8bn in pipeline construction activity globally
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A liquefied natural gas project site. A Global Energy Monitor
report says there are are 600km of pipelines currently under
construction and 12,200km of proposed new infrastructure
across Australia.
Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images |
The warning comes in a new report by Global Energy Monitor tracking 600km of pipelines currently under construction and 12,200km of proposed new infrastructure across Australia, with the total value of this work amounting to $25.8bn (USD$18.6bn).
According to the report, these projects include “substantial capacity expansions planned along the existing national network”, which “highlights the Australian government’s unbridled enthusiasm” for the gas industry despite the risk of creating stranded assets.
Should they all go ahead, these pipelines would lock in decades of new production in several basins on the east coast including Beetaloo and Narrabri, and the Scarborough gas field in the north-west, by connecting them to export terminals.
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The location of existing and potential future supply and infrastructure options across Australia in the 2021 National Gas Plan. Photograph: Commonwealth of Australia |
While the projects tracked in the report are consistent with what appears in
the
2021 National Gas Plan, it also includes the west-east pipeline proposed by former Dow Chemical
Global chairman Andrew Liveris.
Liveris, the deputy chair of oil and gas engineering consultancy Worley and
director of the world’s largest oil company, Saudi Aramco, revived the idea of
a $6bn trans-continental pipeline in 2020
as an architect of the Australian government’s gas-fired recovery in response
to the global pandemic.
The proposal – first suggested in the mid-1970s – has long been considered
unviable for a range of reasons and the most recent iteration has faced
opposition even
from within the fossil fuel sector.
Australia’s building boom comes amid $485.8bn in pipeline construction
activity globally – made up of 408 new pipelines, 70,900km of which are
currently under construction and an additional 122,500km planned – despite a
global push to divest from new fossil fuel investment.
“The world is at an inflection point, where it can hasten the transition to
renewables or further entrench itself in fossil fuels,” the report says. “It
is choosing the latter.”
The burning of fossil fuels such as gas is a key driver of global heating.
Last year the International Energy Agency said limiting global heating to
1.5C, a goal set out in the Paris agreement, meant
exploration and exploitation of new fossil fuel basins had to stop in
2021.
Dan Gocher, Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility’s director of
climate and the environment, said the scale of construction in Australia
showed the “toxic level of influence” fossil fuel companies had on government.
“We don’t need the gas,” Gocher said. “Gas demand on the east coast is
forecast to flatline or decline. And once state governments get serious about
addressing domestic gas demand that demand will really start to decrease.
“It’s a massive stranded asset risk either for the taxpayers that build them
or the companies that operate them.”
Tim Buckley, energy transition analyst and director of Clean
Energy
Finance, said despite “platitudes to decarbonisation” companies were not
taking divestment risk seriously.
But he said that would change over the next few years as governments and
regulatory authorities begin to crack down on “greenwash” and large investors
grow serious about pulling their money out of fossil fuel production.
“You can’t keep investing half a trillion bucks in gas pipelines and think
that in any way that aligns with the Paris targets,” Buckley said.
“When you build a gas pipeline you build it for 50 years, we’ve got a climate
emergency which we need to act on in eight years. How can you build an asset
like that when you have to change by 2050?”
Global Energy Monitor is a San Francisco-based energy monitor that tracks new
fossil fuel developments and advocates for a transition to clean energy. It
also publishes the Global Coal Plant Tracker, which follows investment in new
coal power plants worldwide.
Links
- Australia puts fossil fuel company front and centre at Cop26
- Record levels of renewable energy drive down electricity prices across Australia
- ‘The living heart of Australia’: fracking plans threaten fragile channel country
- Why is Australia building a $600m gas power plant as world experts warn against fossil fuels?
- Energy Australia confirms new gas plant in Illawarra after Morrison government threatened to intervene
- Australia's proposed gas pipelines would generate emissions equivalent to 33 coal-fired power plants
- More of the Great Australian Bight opened to oil and gas
- Reliance on gas could lead to higher electricity bills, Climate Council warns
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