Image: Markus Spiske
Uniting Church WA and Uniting Church VIC TAS are encouraging their members to write letters expressing concern over renewable energy funding to several senators.
According to Revive Magazine, a publication of the Uniting Church in Western Australia, the two branches are troubled by the potential for funds from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) being made available to fund carbon capture and storage.
The concerns are based on some of the 26 recommendations from the King Review earlier this year, which was led by former Origin Energy CEO and Business Council of Australia president Grant King. The panel was tasked with providing advice on how Australia can lower its emissions while supporting the economy, businesses and households.
The Morrison Government supported most the recommendations, including providing a new category under the Emissions Reduction Fund for carbon capture and storage. It also approved in principle to the recommendation to provide ARENA and the CEFC with an expanded, “technology-neutral” remit.
Currently, carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a banned technology under the CEFC’s investment guidelines, and ARENA needs to keep its distance too.
The two branches of the Uniting Church believe polluters should pay clean up their own mess.
“Fossil fuel businesses already make vast profits and should be required to fund their own development of technologies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.”
While the CEFC usually doesn’t give away free money, ARENA does.
Keeping The Fossil Fuel Nightmare Alive
As the term suggests, carbon capture and storage basically involves capturing carbon dioxide from processes such as electricity generation and transporting it to a site for (hopefully) very long-term storage underground. Essentially it’s a very expensive way to sweep dirt under a rug when it makes more sense to not bring dirt into your house in the first place where it can be avoided.
Some of the concerns associated with CCS include abrupt leakage through injection well failure or from abandoned wells, and gradual leakage through undetected faults.
An example of what can happen through the sudden release of huge quantities of carbon dioxide occurred at Lake Nyos in Cameroon in 1986. However, the Lake Nyos disaster, which killed 1,746 people and 3,500 livestock, was a natural event and most proposed (and the few operational) CCS projects are in unpopulated areas.
The viability and safety of CCS is a hotly debated topic – but another major issue is the lure of CCS helps keeps the fossil fuel dream nightmare alive; and with it the myriad other problems associated with finding, extracting, producing and burning fossil fuels.
Renewable Energy The Way Forward
The Uniting Church branches are requesting members write (polite and respectful) letters to Senators Rex Patrick, Jacqui Lambie and Stirling Griff; asking them to commit to opposing changes to CEFC and ARENA investment guidelines that would allow further cuddling up to fossil fuels. Gas is also in the organisations’ cross-hairs.
“Express concern for investment in the gas industry as a post-COVID recovery strategy and highlight that renewable energy is the way forward.”
.. and there’s been a fair bit written about the benefits of a post-COVID recovery led by renewables.
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Reading this made me realize that carbon capture and storage (CCS) is being presented as a kind of “backup plan” for cutting emissions—where CO₂ is captured from industrial sources and stored underground instead of being released into the atmosphere. I like how it explains that CCS is meant to support the transition to cleaner energy, but it also raises concerns that it might slow down the shift to fully renewable solutions if it’s over-relied on. It honestly made me think that solving climate change isn’t just about new technology, but about choosing the right priorities for how we use it.
CCS is otherwise known as “enhanced oil recovery” and as such 80% of the carbon captured is just oil industry standard practice, which they’re now soaking up subsidies for.
The Gorgon gas project has never lived up to the conditions of it’s environmental approval, but despite breaking the rules, the government is too spineless to stop it.
CCS is greenwashing and in many places, like Kemper in the US, a total waste of billions of dollars.