Australia’s gas industry and the owners of all the pipes and infrastructure are on a public relations splurge to convince customers to stick with it in the face of the grand decarbonisation challenge.
A new term – renewable gas – has emerged, with the industry talking the talk about replacing its fossil fuel gas with alternatives such as hydrogen and gas generated from waste.
Brett Heffernan, chief executive of Gas Energy Australia, was given half a page in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph last week to state the case for government support for his industry and to push back on growing calls to curtail the use of gas in homes.
Heffernan wrote that calls to phase out gas connections within five years had exposed “the gulf between rhetoric and reality”.
“The gas sector is already contributing to efforts to combat climate change and is well on the way to decarbonise through renewable gases,” wrote Heffernan.
As this column wrote in July, the gas industry has been using social media advertising and newspaper advertorials to promise that renewable gas is just around the corner.
But just how far has the gas sector got? Is it really “well on the way” to decarbonising?
Gas is a fossil fuel
Firstly, some basics. Burning gas – whether in the home or in a power plant – releases carbon dioxide that was locked away many millions of years ago. As a fossil fuel, it is a big part of the climate emergency.
Heffernan’s article was mostly concerned with domestic gas used in homes and businesses. But so far, only small amounts of green hydrogen have been used from two pilot projects and the emissions reductions are very small.
Hydrogen is only truly green if the energy used to produce it is renewable. This is happening at very small scales using electrolysers powered by wind or solar to extract the gas from water.
In South Australia, Australian Gas Infrastructure Group (AGIG) is blending 5% green hydrogen to gas sent to about 700 homes, and plans to expand this.
AGIG has similar plans for hydrogen blending in Gladstone, Queensland, and at Murray Valley in Victoria.
In New South Wales, gas network operator Jemena has two pilot projects. In November the company started injecting between 1 and 2% green hydrogen to its pipelines in western Sydney. It has approval for up to 4% and expects to produce about 88 tonnes of hydrogen per year.
But the CO2 saving from adding green hydrogen is only about one third of the amount that’s blended. So if the gas in the pipeline has 20% hydrogen added by volume, this only reduces CO2 by about 7%. A 5% blend cuts emissions by less than 2%.
Jemena also has a Sydney project to turn sewage waste at Malabar into biomethane and told Temperature Check this would produce 95 terrajoules a year which was enough to service 6,300 homes. The company expects to scale up to 200TJs at the plant.
For context, Australians use about 166 petajoules of gas in homes (so the Sydney biomethane project could scale up to 0.2 PJ and the hydrogen project could produce about 0.01 PJ).
A report from the International Renewable Energy Agency earlier this year said blending hydrogen into gas networks had several disadvantages. Aside from the limited CO2 savings, blending green hydrogen would likely substantially increase the cost of gas.
A report last year from Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Energy Economics and Energy System Technology came to similar conclusions.
Gas pressure
The gas industry is starting to come under pressure with moves to curtail its business in order to get greenhouse gas emissions down.
In Victoria and South Australia, the Greens are pushing for a ban on new gas connections for homes and the ACT government won’t allow new build homes to connect to gas from January next year.
More than a dozen Victorian councils are looking to ban gas for new homes from next year and the state government is removing a mandate that new builds should come with a gas connection.
Sydney’s Canterbury-Bankstown council has banned gas connections for new apartment buildings, and the thinktank Committee for Sydney is calling for an end to new gas connections to the city’s buildings.
If the gas industry could find enough “renewable gas” to replace the fossil fuel in a way that was economically viable, this would no doubt be good news for the climate.
But to claim the industry is “well on the way to decarbonising” is questionable when the evidence suggests that on the drive to net zero, the industry is still looking for its keys.
New costs?
Heffernan warned Daily Telegraph readers there would be “direct costs to households in switching to all-electric homes” if they switched out gas appliances like cookers.
But what Heffernan’s article did not divulge is that most experts consider once the amount of hydrogen blended into gas goes beyond 20%, appliances will need to be either modified or replaced.
Heffernan told Temperature Check while this was true of hydrogen, this wasn’t the case for biomethane which can be a straight swap for natural gas with no changes needed. He gave the Malabar wastewater plant project as an example.
Heffernan added: “The task before all industries is to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, or sooner if possible. These practical examples do not rely on fossil gas, but are alternatives to it. The Australian gas sector is already testing these renewable gases for their feasibility, efficacy and applicability, as are other countries around the world.”
Heffernan said biogas production and use were “well advanced” internationally, but lack of incentives and support meant Australia was well behind.
It is worth noting at this point that most, if not all, of the pilot projects have gained substantial taxpayer funding.
The Australia Renewable Energy Agency gave Jemena’s Sydney hydrogen project $7.5m and its Malabar biomethane project $5.9m. AGIG got $32.1m from Arena for its Victoria hydrogen pilot, and $4.9m from the South Australian government for its working pilot there.
Complaints
The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) has filed complaints to the Advertising Standards Board over claims related to “renewable gas” made by Australian Gas Networks Ltd.
In the complaint, ACF wants Ad Standards to examine the company’s website, plus adverts on YouTube and Facebook. Temperature Check looked at AGN’s claims in July.
In July, Temperature Check also looked closely at mining giant Glencore’s PR blitz where it is claiming to be “laying the foundations for a low carbon future” after investing almost $1bn in two years on thermal coal production.
Campaign groups Lock the Gate Alliance and Comms Declare, alongside the Plains Clans of the Wonnarua people, has also tabled complaints to the Ad Standards, as well as the ACCC and Asic, over Glencore’s “Advancing everyday life” campaign and other claims about it’s climate goals.
