The great gas con: there are cheaper, cleaner alternatives

Just how long can the Australian government and the gas industry continue the charade that there might be a solution to the surge in domestic gas prices? And what will it take before big business consumers follow the lead of households and smaller commercial and industrial customers and invest in their own cheaper and cleaner alternatives?

Gile Parkinson.

In Canberra on Thursday, as yet another “gas summit” hosted by prime minister Malcolm Turnbull ended without a “fix” to soaring gas prices, the Energy Users Group was complaining that one industrial customer in Queensland was being hit with a new gas supply contract at the usurious price of $23/gigajoule.

Frankly, it beggars belief that Australian industry is even bothering to ask for cheaper gas prices, when there are obviously cheaper alternatives available – for both electricity and for industrial gas users.

An Australian Renewable Energy Agency report last year identified how biogas, geothermal and solar thermal alternatives could provide industrial heat at the equivalent of $5/gigajoule – less than one-quarter of the price being asked for gas now. Why aren’t they embracing these patently cheaper and cleaner alternatives?

Read Giles Parkinson’s story on RenewEconomy - “The great gas con: there are cheaper, cleaner alternatives.”

Gas industry leaders persist in promoting a fallacy

The gas industry is arguing that its product
is "critical and central
 to the decarbonisation of the world.

leaders have declared the fuel is essential to meeting emissions reductions targets and improving security of supply as they seek to turn around slowing demand growth that is contributing to some of the weakest prices for years in the LNG export market.

Origin Energy chief executive Grant King said gas was "absolutely critical and central to the decarbonisation of the world in the next 50 years", and said those turning their back entirely on fossil fuels were putting supply security at risk.

Gas stepped into the breach after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan and is now saving Tasmania from energy shortages after the breakdown of the Basslink power cable, Mr King said ahead of the LNG18 conference in Perth.

Read the story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Gas industry leaders go into battle for LNG.”

(Of course, the gas industry leaders would be claiming their product was "absolutely critical and central to the decarbonisation of the world in the next 50 years", but gas is still a fossil fuel, like coal and all the other energy sources arising from fossil fuels, it emits carbon dioxide, and allows for the maintenance of a life-style which is contrary to a way of living that we will have to arrive at if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change.

By law, the first and largely only responsibility those gas industry leaders have is to the financial wellbeing (profit) of their company and the idea that they might actively pursue the health and welfare of the planet ahead of those perverse, confusing commercial realities is nigh on impossible – Robert McLean.)