Speaker 1: My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda
Speaker 1: Bungelung Calcuttin woman from Gadighal Country. The Daily oz acknowledges
Speaker 1: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Speaker 1: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and torrest
Speaker 1: Rate island and nations. We pay our respects to the
Speaker 1: first peoples of these countries, both past and present.
Speaker 2: Good morning and welcome to the Daily os It's Tuesday,
Speaker 2: the eighth of August.
Speaker 3: I'm Zara Seidler, I'm Sam Kozlowski.
Speaker 2: A controversial plan to store carbon at the bottom of
Speaker 2: the ocean is dividing Australian politicians. On the one hand,
Speaker 2: the government saying the process saves carbon from escaping into
Speaker 2: the atmosphere.
Speaker 4: Returning human produced carbon dioxide back to where it effectively
Speaker 4: came from, if done safely, seems to be a fairly
Speaker 4: sensible thing to do.
Speaker 2: While critics of the scheme say it's just an excuse
Speaker 2: for the government to approve more gas projects.
Speaker 4: A right to register my distress and disgust at this bill.
Speaker 5: And my disappointment in the government which seeks to pass it.
Speaker 2: So when it comes to carbon capture what's working, what's
Speaker 2: gone wrong, and what's going to happen moving forward. TDA
Speaker 2: journalist Tom Crowley is going to come unpack it all
Speaker 2: in the Deep Dive at Fair Sam The headlines.
Speaker 3: The Matilda's Dream is Still Alive. The Matilda's beat Denmark
Speaker 3: Tunil last night in front of over seventy five thousand
Speaker 3: fans at Sydney's Stadium, Australia. That means they're off to
Speaker 3: face either France or Morocco on Saturday night in Brisbane,
Speaker 3: and it could mean that they're destined for their first
Speaker 3: World Cup victory.
Speaker 2: We're expecting to hear about some job losses at David
Speaker 2: Jones that are reportedly set to occur, and it comes
Speaker 2: as the retailer confirmed to TDA that it will quote
Speaker 2: streamline processes and eliminate tasks that are not focused on
Speaker 2: people or service. David Jones says it's actively working to
Speaker 2: redeploy team members where possible.
Speaker 3: The man found guilty of killing a seventeen year old
Speaker 3: schoolgirl in the New South Wales town almost twenty five
Speaker 3: years ago will be jailed for a maximum of thirty
Speaker 3: two years. Craig Henry Rumsby will be eligible for parole
Speaker 3: after twenty four years. He was found guilty of the
Speaker 3: murder in June, in addition to the assault of another
Speaker 3: woman in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 2: And the good news, Australia's first purpose built cystic fibrosis
Speaker 2: ward has been opened. Cystic fibrosis is an inherited disease
Speaker 2: that causes damaging mucus build up in the body's organs.
Speaker 2: The ward was opened at a Sydney hospital and is
Speaker 2: aimed at providing specialized care and treatment for adults with
Speaker 2: cystic fibrosis. Tom, Welcome back to the pod.
Speaker 6: Lovely to be Here'sara, You're here.
Speaker 2: For a very important reason. It's to talk about dumping
Speaker 2: carbon at the bottom of the ocean. You're going to
Speaker 2: need to make some sense of that for.
Speaker 6: Me, yes, well, dumping carbon at the bottom of the
Speaker 6: ocean was a slightly confusing headline that I had to
Speaker 6: grapple with last week. Zara, and I mean, as you know,
Speaker 6: I think something that we have in common. Neither of
Speaker 6: us are great scientific minds, so it took me a
Speaker 6: little while to wade my way through this particular story
Speaker 6: when I covered it last week. Turns out to be
Speaker 6: a fascinating one. Though it's got a bit of science
Speaker 6: in it, it's got a bit of politics in it.
Speaker 6: It tells us something really interesting, I think about the
Speaker 6: weeds of climate action.
Speaker 2: You're promising a lot there with why it might be interesting,
Speaker 2: but I think that we need to take it back
Speaker 2: a step. Why would we dump carbon at the bottom
Speaker 2: of the ocean.
Speaker 6: So dumping carbon at the bottom of the ocean is
Speaker 6: part of a broad category of things called carbon capture
Speaker 6: and storage, which, basically, as the name suggests, is the
Speaker 6: idea that you might capture carbon dioxide before it gets
Speaker 6: to the atmosphere and then store it somewhere. So if
Speaker 6: you pictures are say like a factory or a coal
Speaker 6: plant or something that's normally going to be pumping carbon
Speaker 6: dioxide into the the idea is essentially, you know what
Speaker 6: if we had a way to capture that, stick it
Speaker 6: in the back of a truck or on a ship,
Speaker 6: and then find somewhere that you can store it. And
Speaker 6: one of the places it turns out that we can
Speaker 6: store carbon dioxide is by injecting it into rocks deep
Speaker 6: under the ground. So, for scientific reasons that I hope
Speaker 6: you won't ask me to explain, there are particular types
Speaker 6: of rock that are suitable for this, porous rocks deep underground,
Speaker 6: and then you know there's another layer of rock above
Speaker 6: that the gas can't get up through, and essentially the
Speaker 6: gas can stay there permanently, I guess, out of harm's way.
Speaker 6: And there are, as it turns out, many of these
Speaker 6: sort of suitable rock formations at the bottom of the ocean.
Speaker 6: So for example, old oil and gas fields, it seems
Speaker 6: tend to be quite suitable places to do this, And
Speaker 6: generally speaking, there are a lot of ocean formations where
Speaker 6: people believe this kind of thing might be possible. It's
Speaker 6: an emerging area of technology, but the idea is it
Speaker 6: could hold a bit of promise as an alternative way
Speaker 6: to reduce emissions.
Speaker 2: So you're talking there about basically capturing emissions before they
Speaker 2: rise and then somehow transporting them to be in the
Speaker 2: bottom of the ocean, right, that's what you're saying. That's right,
Speaker 2: And so then I mean, it sounds pretty good on
Speaker 2: the face of it if that can happen, if they're
Speaker 2: not getting up into the air, that sounds like good news.
Speaker 6: That's great, doesn't that sor?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does surely have to be a catch.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's fair to say there's been a couple of
Speaker 6: hitches so far Zara with carbon capture and storage, namely
Speaker 6: the capture and also the storage.
Speaker 2: Two fundamental parts of carbon capture and storage spall issues.
Speaker 6: So this is I mean, I'm making light of it.
Speaker 6: This is something that does happen successfully on occasion. But
Speaker 6: so far, what we've tended to find in you know,
Speaker 6: over the few years where we've been trying to do this,
Speaker 6: is that the capture part can be a bit leaky,
Speaker 6: so you know, generally doesn't capture you know, as much
Speaker 6: of the carbon dioxide as you might like. And then
Speaker 6: the storage can be a bit difficult as well to
Speaker 6: achieve success fully. And again the concern that it's not
Speaker 6: air tight and that it leaks out, and particularly at
Speaker 6: the bottom of the ocean, if your storage is leaky,
Speaker 6: if your injection method doesn't work, then that can damage
Speaker 6: marine life around the bottom of the ocean and can
Speaker 6: have significant environmental impacts. So both parts of the problem
Speaker 6: are still really works in progress. But there's a broader
Speaker 6: issue that comes back to the politics and to the
Speaker 6: broader climate change debate, and that is that where this
Speaker 6: carbon capture and storage, or CCS as I'll refer to
Speaker 6: it for shorthand, is actually just going to be used
Speaker 6: as a bit of an excuse for I guess, genuine
Speaker 6: emissions reduction, because we're talking about designing these complicated ways
Speaker 6: to take carbon dioxide out of the sky and put
Speaker 6: it in the ground. Of course, in a sense, the
Speaker 6: simpler way would be to just not be emitting it
Speaker 6: in the first place. And especially when you look at
Speaker 6: energy and obviously we're talking about a transit towards renewable
Speaker 6: energy that doesn't have you know, any emissions or that is,
Speaker 6: you know, very low emissions. There's been a suggestion from
Speaker 6: a lot of environmentalists that CCS is I guess, getting
Speaker 6: in the way of genuine emissions reduction, especially when it's
Speaker 6: being used in the context of fossil fuel burning. And
Speaker 6: I think generally speaking, environmentalists suggests that, you know, fossil
Speaker 6: fuel companies often want to use CCS as a way
Speaker 6: to prolong their burning of fossil fuels, and so as
Speaker 6: a result you know, global agreements on this.
Speaker 2: Can you just explain that would why would that prolong
Speaker 2: their use of fossil fuels?
Speaker 6: Yeah, So, I guess, effectively the idea being if a
Speaker 6: coal plant or a gas plant could say, well, hey,
Speaker 6: you know, we can keep burning coal because we can
Speaker 6: just capture all the emissions and stick them in the
Speaker 6: ground and there's no negative impact on the climate. That's
Speaker 6: essentially you know, the argument that they might make. And
Speaker 6: when this technology hasn't been working perfectly, that's the kind
Speaker 6: of thing that environmentalists say they're worried about. And so
Speaker 6: when you look at global agreements around CCS, and you know,
Speaker 6: the big international agreements, the language that the UN and
Speaker 6: the IPCC and others tend to use is that CCS
Speaker 6: has a lot of potential for activities where emissions are
Speaker 6: really hard to reduce. So a classic example is cement production,
Speaker 6: where we just don't have a way of making cement
Speaker 6: that is greener that doesn't emit. And so you know,
Speaker 6: that's something where CCS might be really useful, but international
Speaker 6: experts tend to be wary about using it in the
Speaker 6: context of fossil fuels. And that's where this starts to
Speaker 6: get into some thornier politics.
Speaker 2: All right, So you just segued us there pretty nicely.
Speaker 2: We're talking about this because of the government and some
Speaker 2: legislation right we are.
Speaker 6: So the government has a bill in Parliament to expand
Speaker 6: the capacity for companies to do ccs in Australia underwater. Now,
Speaker 6: the first thing to say is that it is already
Speaker 6: legal to do this in Australia.
Speaker 2: With is it widespread.
Speaker 3: It's reasonably widespread. It happens a little bit.
Speaker 6: They're about thirty underwater projects worldwide, including some in Australia,
Speaker 6: which shall come to in a moment. You've got to
Speaker 6: get a permit granted by the Environment Minister and it
Speaker 6: has to happen according to certain safeguards. But at the
Speaker 6: moment it is legal to happen within Australian waters. What's
Speaker 6: not currently legal is for Australian companies to export carbon
Speaker 6: for the purposes of carbon capture and storage in other
Speaker 6: countries waters, and that's what the government's now trying to change.
Speaker 6: And the specific reason, really the context for this is
Speaker 6: that there is a gas company in Australia that wants
Speaker 6: to do this in another country's waters, and that is Santos,
Speaker 6: the gas giant in the Northern Territory. They have an
Speaker 6: oil and gas field that is sort of based off
Speaker 6: the Northern Territory. That's about to come out of commission,
Speaker 6: and they say they could use that decommissioned oil and
Speaker 6: gas field to store about ten million tons of carbon
Speaker 6: dioxide each year. It's a whole lot, but it overlaps
Speaker 6: with the waters of Team or Less Day and so
Speaker 6: it would require a different set of approvals. Team or
Speaker 6: Less Day is broadly supportive of the idea. This is
Speaker 6: a bill that the Government is pushing through. It's not
Speaker 6: explicitly about Santos, but it would allow that project and
Speaker 6: other projects like it to get off the ground subject
Speaker 6: to official approvals. And that's something the Government introduced to Parliament.
Speaker 4: In the real world that we live in, including here in Australia,
Speaker 4: most people still drive petrol cars and rely on coal
Speaker 4: and gas for their energy. We cannot change that overnight,
Speaker 4: it is as simple as that. But we can begin
Speaker 4: to take mitigation measures such as carbon capture and storage
Speaker 4: to reduce atmospheric carbon wherever it is safe to do so.
Speaker 2: It's so interesting, and I mean, I can imagine it's
Speaker 2: contentious for a number of reasons. What's the response to
Speaker 2: the Government's bill being.
Speaker 6: So It has encountered some backlash from Greens and independence
Speaker 6: in the Parliament. I guess essentially making similar arguments to
Speaker 6: the ones that I'm referring to earlier, that you know,
Speaker 6: the sorts of concerns that environmentalists have here, and that
Speaker 6: is the idea. The word they use is green washing
Speaker 6: that essentially CCS is used as an excuse by fossil
Speaker 6: fuel companies to keep doing what they're doing.
Speaker 5: Are we dumping carbon in the sea to protect the
Speaker 5: marine environment? Isn't carbon capture and storage an old and
Speaker 5: failed technology, And rather than fight climate change, won't this
Speaker 5: bill make it worse by enabling more gas minds to proceed.
Speaker 6: And there is a bit of a track record of
Speaker 6: that actually in Australia, so we mentioned earlier, the biggest
Speaker 6: underwater CCS project in the world was started by Chevron
Speaker 6: off the coast of Wa in twenty nineteen, and it
Speaker 6: was a catastrophic failure. Continues to be a catastrophic failure.
Speaker 6: It just hasn't worked. They haven't been able to actually
Speaker 6: store the gas at the bottom of the ocean. And
Speaker 6: I guess what the Greens and independents are concerned about
Speaker 6: is that Chevron used this CCS to justify essentially a
Speaker 6: new gas project because they were able to say to
Speaker 6: the government at the approval stage, well, hey, this new
Speaker 6: gas project's going to be super green because we're going
Speaker 6: to take all the emissions and we're going to stick
Speaker 6: it at the bottom of the ocean. But that second
Speaker 6: part hasn't worked, and in general the technology for that
Speaker 6: second part is a little bit underdeveloped, and so they say, well,
Speaker 6: this is really just a bit of a you know,
Speaker 6: a fig leaf. Greenwashing is the word that they use
Speaker 6: for companies like Chevron to be able to do that.
Speaker 6: And they point to there's a precinct called the Middle
Speaker 6: Arm Precinct in the Northern Territory which has some government
Speaker 6: funding behind it. It's framed as this sustainability precinct. It
Speaker 6: has some CCS facilities involved, but it also happens to
Speaker 6: be key to unlocking gas exploration in the Bee lou Basin,
Speaker 6: another controversial new gas project. And so, you know, the
Speaker 6: concern there is is that this is actually, you know,
Speaker 6: this is an idea that has the support of the
Speaker 6: fossil fuel industry, and the Greens oppose it for that reason.
Speaker 6: The Independents don't pose it quite as directly as that.
Speaker 6: They say that they would support the bill with some amendments.
Speaker 6: In particular, they're asking, well, can you just than fossil
Speaker 6: fuel companies from using CCS and restrict it to cases
Speaker 6: like cement. Now, that would go well beyond the scope
Speaker 6: of the government's current bill. That would be a much
Speaker 6: bigger change to existing practices. But that's the kind of
Speaker 6: thing that they're currently calling for. And you know, more
Speaker 6: broadly speaking, I think both the Greens and the Independents
Speaker 6: are suggesting that this CCS might sound like an emission's
Speaker 6: reduction method, but they see something different in it.
Speaker 2: I'm curious to know where the opposition lands on this topic.
Speaker 6: Well, the Opposition, they haven't formally expressed a view. So
Speaker 6: the way these things usually go is that bills go
Speaker 6: through committees of parliamentarians that consider them in detail, and
Speaker 6: all that happens off Broadway, and in that process the
Speaker 6: Coalition didn't raise any objections. Generally speaking, when they were
Speaker 6: in government, they were very supportive of ccs. So although
Speaker 6: they haven't stated a formal position yet, it's expected that
Speaker 6: they're likely to support this, which would mean of course
Speaker 6: that the Greens and the independence their votes are essentially irrelevant,
Speaker 6: and that we see a bit of that in the
Speaker 6: government response. I mean, the government has defended its bill.
Speaker 6: The Government's tried to emphasize the fact that by putting
Speaker 6: safeguards around this, essentially, you know, by legalizing it with
Speaker 6: a permit system, you get greater control over it. You
Speaker 6: will also get greater control over any other countries who
Speaker 6: want to try and do this in our waters. That
Speaker 6: this would actually Environment Minister Tenny plyversexes. It's about protecting
Speaker 6: our oceans, but you know also that this might help
Speaker 6: to reduce emissions. But yeah, I mean I think that
Speaker 6: this is one it's a I guess it's an issue
Speaker 6: you do need to kind of peel back some of
Speaker 6: the layers to understand what's really going on here. And
Speaker 6: certainly when I saw this headline, I guess when you
Speaker 6: when you look at CCS as a broad principal thing,
Speaker 6: like you said at the start of the podcast, are
Speaker 6: you look at it and your guard It sounds sounds great,
Speaker 6: it's quite it's quite common, replicated, and it's quite contentious.
Speaker 6: And I think that this is one of those issues.
Speaker 6: It may sail through the Parliament with the Coalition support,
Speaker 6: but it's one of these ones where, yeah, the devil
Speaker 6: is in the detail and you know, one form of
Speaker 6: emission's reductions and another form of emissions reduction. The differences
Speaker 6: between these things can actually be be really complicated, and
Speaker 6: good to take the opportunity for a little bit of
Speaker 6: a deep dive into climate change, even if it did
Speaker 6: require both of us to talk about probably more science
Speaker 6: than we've done in the last three or four months combined.
Speaker 2: And I specially appreciate that you just said the words
Speaker 2: deep dive when talking about the bottom of the ocean.
Speaker 6: Carbon is better down where it's wetter under the seat.
Speaker 3: Thanks for joining us on the Daily OS today. If
Speaker 3: you have a story you'd like us to explain this week,
Speaker 3: just leave it in the Spotify question box. We'll be
Speaker 3: back again tomorrow. Until then, have a great day.