HANSARD EXTRACT
| Science and Innovation Committee
Report |
| 13
August 2007 |
Mr HAYES
(Werriwa) (4.00 p.m.)—It is a
pleasure to speak on this report of the House of Representatives
Standing Committee on Science and Innovation, Between a rock and
a hard place: the science of geosequestration. It is a report of
substance that you will read a little more about in the media for
other reasons this evening and tomorrow. It was very timely to look
at the issue of geosequestration, for Australia at the moment
confronts the challenges of its economic advancement and reliance on
fossil fuels as well as its greenhouse gas emissions and its
responsibilities to mitigate its effects on the climate.
Before I get too far into it, can I first compliment the chair of
this inquiry, the member for Kooyong. A lot of wide-ranging and
diverse views came before this committee. The evidence taken over
many months and the amount of documentation submitted to the
committee gave rise to different points of view being adopted by
members of the committee. But I will come back to that a little
later on. I would like to also acknowledge, if I may, Dr Anna Dacre,
the committee secretary, Dr Alison Clegg and the other inquiry
secretaries, Peter Keel and Michael Crawford. Many of us do take for
granted sometimes the assistance, dedication and professionalism
that is exhibited by committee staff. They work very hard to make us
look, in many respects, a lot better than we are. I do thank them
for the efforts they have put in on this report.
As I was saying, this is a significant milestone in looking at where
we should go in terms of our energy production. One of the things we
cannot deny is that the coal industry plays an important part in our
economy. At the moment the coal industry directly employs some
30,000 Australians. It is also our largest export earner. Last year
I think somewhere in the vicinity of $24½ billion in export earnings
was generated through coal exports.
Currently Australia has 8.6 per cent of the world’s black coal
reserves. That is in excess of a 200-year supply of black coal.
There is something in the vicinity of an 800-year supply in the
remaining reserves of brown coal—that is at current production
levels. So Australia is very much dependent on our coal industry.
Apart from everything else, presently 83 per cent of our total
energy is produced from coal sources. One of the things we do need
to address in this country, amongst other things in terms of a suite
of technologies to take us further—and that includes renewable
energies, of which, having worked within that sector, I am
particularly partial to—is what can give us a real advantage in
using our coal and protecting our environment. So clean-burning coal
resources are essential to the future prosperity of this country.
One aspect of that is geosequestration, which is the capture and
storage of CO with a view to allowing us to compete and exploit the
benefits of our vast coal reserves, while also moving us in the
direction of environmental protection and a reduction in the
greenhouse gas emissions from our industries. There is no doubt we
live in a carbon constrained world, despite what many might think.
There is a real potential for Australia not only to fully
participate in these industries but also to commercialise its carbon
capture technologies.
We pride ourselves on being an innovative nation. It should not take
us that long to work out that we are sitting on an abundance of the
world supply of coal. If we have worked out that our economy is
going to be heavily geared to the export of coal for generations to
come, then we should have realised long before now that we should be
the world leaders in clean-burning coal resources and technologies
such as geosequestration.
There are a number of options that fall to us already in terms of
geosequestration. There are a range of storage options that are
available to us, including depleted gas and oil fields, unmined or
unmineable coal seams and the injection of carbon dioxide into
existing reservoirs, which is called enhanced recovery. That is
something we have been doing in this nation for a long while,
particularly in Western Australia, in trying to exploit the final
reserves of oil. It is certainly a known technology.
It became very clear to us during this inquiry that the technologies
which are being deployed are not new. They have been finessed and
developed, but the whole notion of geosequestration or carbon
capture and storage is not necessarily a new technology. We have
been doing various aspects of it, including advanced oil and gas
recovery by injecting CO into existing oil reservoirs, for some
time. We now want to finesse the process to where we commercialise
the technology, not to produce additional hydrocarbon but to ensure
permanent storage of liquid CO at depth for centuries, if not
thousands of years.
Whilst I had thought that most people involved in the inquiry were
singing from the same hymn sheet in relation to this issue, to the
surprise of most people, four government members of the
committee—which is the majority of government members—chose to
submit a dissenting report. It is the right of everyone to question,
but when they question not the technology and its commercialisation
and whether it is capable of doing something to reduce carbon
emissions but question what goes to the very heart of this—whether
human involvement is exacerbating climate change—I think the Labor
members and other members who formed the majority on the committee
find that very hard to accept.
There is ample scientific evidence now that indicates that human
behaviour in the modern industrial period has contributed to the
build-up of greenhouse gases which has contributed to climate
change. I am not a scientist, but I would have thought—from the
abundance of material submitted to this inquiry and the abundance of
material that is on the internet and even what our children learn in
school—that this is not a contested position. Yet a majority of
government members on this committee challenge the very fact that
human involvement has resulted in greater carbon dioxide emissions
to the atmosphere, which in turn is having an impact on climate
change.
At this late stage, not of this report or this government but, quite
frankly, of our industrial development, we have people in our
elected positions now coming before us and questioning whether
humans have impacted on the emission of CO and whether we need to
take steps to reduce the production of greenhouse gases and saying
the jury is out on that. I have to say that, if I were living in the
electorates of any of those people, I would seriously consider my
position coming up to the next election. I would want people who
were actually going to sit down and look at what is good for our
future. I endorse the geosequestration report and indicate that it
does endorse a number of the existing policy positions already
adopted by the Labor Party in terms of geosequestration and its
investment in this country. (Time expired)
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