‘Gas next frontier in energy war’, say Greens

Adam Bandt has revealed the Greens will demand new legislation in a minority government to restrict gas export contracts, forcing major gas companies to divert supply to the domestic market.

Greens leader Adam Bandt. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Adam Bandt has revealed the Greens will demand new legislation in a minority government to restrict gas export contracts, forcing major gas companies to divert supply to the domestic market – including for manufacturers and households – ahead of international buyers.

The Greens leader said the environmental party would focus its climate attack against Labor at the next election heavily around gas by pushing for exports to be restricted, the electrification of LNG terminals and much greater government support to transition industry and households off it.

Mr Bandt also revealed he would back a “much bigger role for publicly owned renewable energy, in generation and in sale to businesses and households”.

The Greens support a 75 per cent emissions reduction target by 2030 as a platform to reach net zero by 2035, with Mr Bandt saying “any updating of the targets will reflect the fact that the climate crisis has got more urgent rather than less urgent”.

Mr Bandt said it was still possible for Australia to end its thermal coal export industry and shut down coal-fired power stations by the end of the decade, arguing “it can and should be done”.

Opening up a new battlefront with Labor, Mr Bandt made clear gas loomed as the next frontier in the climate debate. He said there was no need to find new sources of supply when the big LNG exporters could be targeted to meet domestic demand. “Australia is awash with gas, it’s just not being directed to the right places,” he said. “We’ve got a three-point plan to take on the big gas corporations.”

The first step would be to back “legislation to prioritise supply to Australian industry during the transition, including potentially restricting future contracts”.

“We are confident that it can be done in a way that is constitutional,” Mr Bandt said. “But it will involve taking on the big gas corporations and making it clear that the priority has to be making gas available domestically during the transition.”

In addition to restricting exports, Mr Bandt said step two of the Greens’ plan involved forcing the big LNG platforms to stop using gas themselves. “The biggest user of gas in Australia is the gas industry itself. The gas industry uses more gas for liquefaction than the (entirety) of Australian manufacturing put together.”

The Greens, he said, would “make these LNG export terminals electrified”, declaring they use “huge amounts of gas solely for the purpose of export to make massive profit”. “They’ve no restriction on doing it. That would free up huge amounts of gas that could be used domestically while we make the transition.”

The Australian Energy Update produced by the Department of Climate Change and Energy in September 2023 found that mining, including LNG plants, accounted for about 33 per cent of Australian domestic gas use in 2021-22, with 29 per cent, or 450 petajoules, of gas consumption occurring at LNG plants. This compared with manufacturing, which accounted for 25 per cent, or 396 petajoules, of Australian domestic gas use over 2021-22.

Mr Bandt said the third step was for government to provide “significant support to industry and households to electrify”.

“Where substitution is possible, government should help businesses and households,” he said.

“A lot of gas is used for heating in industrial processes. Now that could be substituted for electricity, but industry is going to need some help to make that substitution.”

The focus of the Greens’ climate policy has shifted from targets and the scale of our emissions reduction ambition to a more aggressive push for the government to cancel new coal and gas mines.

Mr Bandt said that “together with the cost-of-living and housing crises, climate will be an issue this election”. He said people voted for climate action at the last election, but Australia had gone backwards. “Emissions are slightly up. Pollution from gas continues to keep Australia’s pollution unacceptably high.”

Asked about the costs of achieving the Greens’ more ambitious climate targets, Mr Bandt said the party’s 2022 election plan revealed a “$51.9bn improvement to the fiscal balance” courtesy of its plans to increase the tax take from big corporations.