The Emissions Impact of Additional LNG in Asia

16 December 2024

Last week the WA Government approved extending the life of the North West Shelf (NWS) LNG plant to 2070, well beyond the same government’s 2050 target to reach net zero. The NWS will emit more than 10 times Australia’s annual emissions.
Seeking to justify the approval, the WA Premier argued that expanding the use of gas would be good, not just for WA, but the whole global environment. He said: “We are trying to save the planet, not just trying to save Western Australia …We know that gas is going to play an important role in helping other countries to get out of coal.”
Does this claim, by the premier and backed by industry, that gas is a necessary transition fuel for Australia and our Asian neighbours bear scrutiny?
The CSIRO has published a comprehensive report to examine this question. Despite it been commissioned by Woodside, the report shows, that expanding Australian gas exports risks undermining the transition to clean energy in our region.
In direct opposition to the assertions of the Premier, the CSIRO report shows that more WA gas will delay Asia’s shift to cleaner renewable energy, as gas is more likely to displace new renewable energy than coal.
Gas projects like the NWS will not help our neighbours lower their emissions, but instead, keep them hooked on fossil fuels for longer.
The inconvenient truth is that the assertion from a decade ago that gas is a transition fuel no longer stacks up. The evidence today is that gas needs to be transitioned out and replaced by cheaper renewables as quickly as possible.
You can read the report here:

Modelling the emissions impact of additional LNG in Asia