The CSIRO is defending a report on the prospect of offsetting massive new greenhouse gas emissions from developing the Beetaloo Basin, in the face of calls for the findings to be reviewed or thrown out.
The report, which was published on Friday, found it would be technically possible to offset emissions from developing the basin south-east of Darwin, but only if a number of challenges were overcome.
In the meantime, the Northern Territory government is preparing to announce whether it will allow full-scale fracking to go ahead and has promised all domestic emissions from the basin will be offset if it does.
Offsetting a small-scale fracking industry would use up 10 per cent of all carbon credits available annually in Australia, the authors found.
They also said it would require the use of "nascent" carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, which is not yet proven to work at scale.
The costs of offsetting the emissions were not calculated and it was assumed that the bulk of Beetaloo gas would be exported from Darwin.
However, the offsets calculations underpinning the report have been labelled "wildly unrealistic" by whistleblower and former head of the Clean Energy Regulator's offsets integrity committee, Professor Andrew MacIntosh.
In a follow-up interview, Professor MacIntosh said that, while he had collaborated with and greatly respected the work of many CSIRO researchers, "in this case, something has gone wrong".
He said the amount of pollution the report estimated could be offset using a range of abatement methods — such as revegetation of certain land categories — was "demonstrable nonsense".
"They've come forward with estimates [for the amount of emissions that can be offset] that are grossly inflated," he told ABC Radio Darwin.
"I think what needs to happen here is that someone needs to do a proper peer review of this work.
"And probably [someone] needs to re-do the work in order to get a more robust abatement and the amount of offsets that can really be generated in the Northern Territory, and across the country more broadly."
Asked if the report should be used by the government to show the basin's emissions could be offset as promised, Professor MacIntosh replied: "No."
"What people like me would like to see — because I am not an opponent of the gas industry and I am not an opponent of offsets — what I would like to see is offsets undertaken that are legitimate," he said.
"That is, they are generating real and additional abatement."
A spokesperson for the Northern Territory's Climate Change and Environment Minister Lauren Moss declined the ABC's request for an interview.
At a press conference on Thursday, NT Chief Minister Natasha Fyles was asked about Professor MacIntosh's call for the report's findings to be reviewed.
"So we've been very clear: we know that we are facing energy security issues across Australia and around the world, we've seen that war in Ukraine and the impact," she said.
"Gas is a transition fuel, we absolutely need to get to renewables as the way of our energy source of the future.
"But if the rest of Australia wants our gas for energy security, they need to come to the table with those emission offsets."
CSIRO defends findings, peer review process
A spokesperson for the CSIRO also declined an interview request.
The report was written by researchers working for CSIRO's Gas Industry Social and Environment Alliance (GISERA), which receives a third of its funding from the gas industry and the rest from government.
Its findings were published a year after they were due to be released, with a CSIRO spokesperson listing "extensive stakeholder consultations" and the COVID-19 pandemic among reasons for the delay.
In a statement, the spokesperson said the report was peer reviewed, in line with normal processes.
"The NT offsets report was subject to CSIRO's standard peer review process, which involves impartial and independent assessment of research by others working in the same or a related field," the statement read.
The spokesperson also responded to criticism about industry influence on the agency, which was last year forced to retract false climate science statements in Beetaloo Basin documents.
"The GISERA Alliance Agreement between CSIRO, government and industry partners provides a transparent governance framework to provide high-quality, independent scientific research and information to communities living in gas development regions.," the spokesperson said.
No comment from Chris Bowen on implications for other emitters
Interview requests dating back to July last year on Beetaloo Basin emissions have been ignored or declined by the office of federal Climate Minister Chris Bowen.
The territory and federal governments remain in a stand-off over Territory Labor's emissions offset promise, which cannot be achieved without the Commonwealth's formal commitment and help.
Authors of the report noted it was out of their scope to examine the "market aspects" or "opportunity costs of interest to policy-makers" associated with using 10 per cent of Australia's "finite" offsets pool to develop the Beetaloo Basin.
In response to questions as to whether Mr Bowen supported that approach, a spokesperson said:
"The NT Government has been clear that production of any onshore gas would only occur if and when all recommendations of the Pepper Inquiry have been implemented.
"This includes the recommendation that there is no net increase in the life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions emitted in Australia from any onshore shale gas produced in the NT.
"We welcome the NT's commitment in this regard.
"At the federal level, the government is delivering certainty by introducing reforms to the safeguard mechanism, which puts Australia's largest emitters on a trajectory to net zero."
Developing the basin is a key plank of the territory government's hopes to increase much-needed revenue and grow its stunted local economy.
Climate scientists say pushing ahead with any new fossil fuel developments at this point will derail the agreement to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius.
