Australia’s gas bonanza is for corporate super-profits, not climate superheroes

Like so many historical examples of self-preservation sold as a hypocritical message, the Albanese Government is promising to transition away from fossil fuels by expanding the production of fossil gas.

At the very last minute, at COP30 in Brazil, Australia signed onto something known as the “BELEM DECLARATION ON THE TRANSITION AWAY FROM FOSSIL FUELS”. It was announced at about 11:30am on Friday the 21st of November (Central European time (CET)).

The Declaration is what it sounds like – a plan to collectively work towards “a just, orderly and equitable transition away from fossil fuels”.

At about 11:30am on Saturday the 22nd of November (CET), Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said this

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, overnight Australia has signed up to the Belém Declaration on the transition away from fossil fuels. I was wondering how that kind of fits with the Government’s future gas strategy which states that natural gas will be needed to 2050 and beyond – a fossil fuel?

PRIME MINISTER: Well it is needed. It’s a part of the transition which is occurring. What you need to back up renewables is firming capacity, that’s what’s enabling the investment to occur. And all of the energy experts say the cheapest form of transition is renewables backed by gas, backed by hydro, backed by batteries. That’s Australia’s position.

Later on, Albanese is a little more straightforward: 

JOURNALIST: Do you understand how people would understand that now that you’ve signed up to this declaration that there would be movement on tapering off coal exports or gas exports or gas in general? You’re saying that that’s not the case at all?

PRIME MINISTER: No.

I make it around 24 hours that Australia was in the “BELEM DECLARATION ON THE TRANSITION AWAY FROM FOSSIL FUELS” before it was superseded by the “ANTHONY ALBANESE DECLARATION ON NOT TRANSITIONING AWAY FROM FOSSIL FUELS”

Packaged in Albanese’s terse answers was an awful little nugget of disinformation that’s currently dominating the world of fossil gas advocacy in Australia: the idea that the vast swathes of massive new gas projects in Australia are there to humbly and bravely help the integration of renewable energy. 

In short: it’s just made up. Even if you narrowly only look at the planned projects – excluding any existing gas production – it is vastly more than the dwindling amount of gas you might use in a power grid to help integrate renewable energy. 

That is before we even consider the fact that Australia’s grid operator is still probably over-estimating how much gas is needed: batteries are becoming cheaper and are being deployed significantly faster than previously anticipated – not just impacting the gas consumption for power stations but also facilitating more household electrification and further demand reductions for gas.

As I recently wrote here at The Point, there are a wide range of justifications for fossil fuels that take on the tone of the reluctant, brave climate superhero – such as the false claim that Australia’s gas exports cut coal use overseas. The idea that Australia needs to open up ultra-massive gas fields to supply a tiny amount of domestic gas use in the power sector is one of the worst, because it’s wrong by such a gigantic margin.

No matter how Albanese spins it, gas companies are in it for their own super-profits, not to be climate superheroes. It only took 24 hours for the protection of those profits to be reconfirmed by Australia’s government.