This is why you need to pay attention to sponsorships like that of gas cartelier Origin Energy of The Grattan Institute.
Last year, Grattan unveiled the worst piece of gas cartel propaganda seen in a decade (since its previous worst), when it declared that climate change mitigation depended upon getting households off gas:
Australia needs to get off natural gas if it is to have any hope of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
This outright rubbish was clearly contradicted by Grattan’s own dodgy report.
Household gas emissions are tiny versus every other users, including the gas cartel itself:
In reality it is likely that gas cartel emissions are much, much worse.
The ruinous Grattan report did not include fugitive emissions for the gas industry and it should.
…the research, which itself has become enmeshed in a political argument in the US, has concluded that LNG is 33% worse in terms of planet-heating emissions over a 20-year period compared with coal.
…Howarth’s paper finds that as much as 3.5% of the gas delivered to customers leaks to the atmosphere unburned, much more than previously assumed. Methane is about 80 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, even though it persists for less time in the atmosphere, and scientists have warned that rising global methane emissions risk blowing apart agreed-upon climate goals.
Howarth’s research found that during LNG production, around half of the total emissions occur during the long journey taken by gas as it is pushed through pipelines to coastal terminals after it is initially drilled, usually via hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, from areas such as the US’s vast shale deposits.
The energy used to do this, along with the leaks, causes pollution that is exacerbated once the gas gets to the export facilities. There, it is supercooled to -162C (-260F) to become a liquid, which is loaded into huge storage containers on tankers. The tankers then travel long distances to deliver the product to client countries, where it is turned back into a gas and then burned
Where is the Grattan analysis of how much more destructive for climate change is the gas industry versus tiny end usage like households? Where is the Grattan analysis of how much worse fugitive emissions make climate change?
Perhaps we should ask Grattan sponsor, Origin Energy?
The Greens illustrate the point further, with the only rational energy policy in Canberra.
The Greens propose much stronger East Coast gas reservation to resolve the local shortages created by dodgy Grattan Institute advice.
They also want the gas cartel to electrify its LNG processes to reduce the enormous carbon output that the dodgy Grattan Institute is hiding behind a vicious attack on households.
