Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

The safeguard mechanism reform process offers a unique opportunity to address energy sector methane emissions. Methane is the main ingredient of natural gas. It's also a powerful climate pollutant. Methane is the second most abundant greenhouse gas released into the atmosphere. It traps 80 times more heat in our atmosphere than does carbon dioxide. Over the last two centuries, methane concentrations in our atmosphere have more than doubled. According to the UN Environment Programme, methane has accounted for more than 30 per cent of climate change since preindustrial times.

Quickly and effectively reducing methane pollution is an essential step in preventing the worst impacts of anthropogenic climate change. Huge amounts of methane escape into our atmosphere through the process of gas extraction, through leaks but also from deliberate releases for venting and flaring. Coalmines, for example, vent methane to prevent explosions. That leaked methane is lost energy that could be captured and used to generate electricity and to heat homes. Globally the fossil fuel industry emits enough escaped and unburnt methane every year to meet the gas demands of Europe.

But leaked methane doesn't just pollute our air and represent a wasted energy source; it also affects our health. As methane is leaked, so too are other volatile organic compounds, including benzene, toluene, n-hexane and carbonyl sulphide. These travel from their source into the air that all of us breathe. Volatile organic compounds cause cancer, premature birth and respiratory, neurological and cardiovascular diseases, and they cause sudden death. The climate warming associated with release of these compounds into the air that we all breathe contributes to extreme weather events, to bushfires, to longer allergy seasons and to the spread of infectious diseases.

To see the effect of these changes in Australia we just need to look from this place to the rural communities and the cities affected by fire and by flood: to Cobargo, to Mallacoota, to Kangaroo Island, to Lismore and to Woodburn; to the Kimberley and most recently to the Victoria Daly region of the Northern Territory. The Black Summer of 2019-20 caused us more than $2 billion in smoke related health costs. The extreme mental health impact of the recent New South Wales and Queensland floods has been well documented: emotional instability, stress, anxiety, depression and trauma. We are all paying the cost of unregulated fossil fuel industries.

Australia has already joined the Global Methane Pledge, a commitment to reduce human caused methane emissions by at least 30 per cent from 2020 levels by 2030. But our problem is regulation, or lack thereof. The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting scheme allows our fossil fuel operators to choose the level of accuracy they apply to measuring their own emissions. For most gas and oil activities, companies can opt to use generic estimations based on national averages, rather than direct measurement of their actual emissions. The Environmental Defence Fund and other scientific bodies have suggested the industry has understated its oil and gas methane emissions by as much as 70 per cent.

The ineffective regulation of the NGER and safeguard schemes has benefited fossil fuel companies at the expense of other Australian businesses, of households and of our climate—at all of our expense. The technology already exists to measure methane emissions far more accurately, using onsite methane detectors, aerial surveys and satellites with unprecedented ability to measure emission sources and quantities. The International Energy Agency has said that we could use these current technologies to cut our methane emissions by 70 per cent by 2030 and that two-thirds of those costs are achievable at no additional net cost.

Put simply, we have to regulate this sector. We can't leave it to fossil fuel companies to regulate themselves. The safeguard mechanism reform should provide a clear incentive for these companies to take mitigation action. The Albanese government has to mandate gold-standard methane emissions monitoring, reporting and verification, and intensity targets in line with international best practice.

Properly regulating our methane emissions will make no more captured methane available to industries and to households. We will cut Australia's emissions of a potent greenhouse gas. We can do this now or not, but, if we don't, we should all be held to account.

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