The Get Off Gas pledge goes live, HESC coal to hydrogen & CCS project a climate disaster and decommissioned gas wells leaking off the WA coast. Check out the latest developments in the No More Gas campaign and find out what you can do about them!
We’re nearly at the end of financial year and celebrating our 50th birthday at FoE Melbourne and all of the fantastic results we’ve been able to facilitate; like the only constitutional ban on fracking and acid well stimulation (really dodged a bullet there) in the world, some of the world’s most ambitious emissions reduction targets and an early end to native logging.
We are asking our supporters to help us reach $100k in donations so we can spend the next 50 years bringing good outcomes for the planet – or win at everything and put ourselves out of a job!
(if you can – we know that times are tough)
Get Off Gas pledge site ready to launch!
Please join us for a web launch this Sunday evening of our Get Off Gas pledge site. We are asking the gas using people of Victoria, the heaviest household gas using population in Australia to take the pledge to get off gas. We will collect the pledges and amount of gas households want to be free of, and use this to pressure the State Government to help particularly lower income homes towards the end of the gas distribution network to switch to 100% renewable energy.
Online launch: Get Off Gas website
7:30pm Sunday 2 July
TAKE THE PLEDGE!!!...and tell your friends!
Community Gas Retirement Roadmap delivery to MPs
To coincide with the launch of the Get Off Gas pledge we are calling on our supporters to hand deliver copies of the Community Gas Retirement Roadmap to their local MP with a checklist of the top recommendations from the roadmap to help us understand where our State Parliamentarians stand on the key issues affecting our gas use statewide.
Wherever you are, whether this is the first time you’ve approached a Member of Parliament for any reason, we have full training on the steps to take to make a lasting difference to the climate and energy use in Victoria.
Please reply to this email if you can help with this critically important project.
Rental Fuel switching
The No More Gas campaign is fully aware that the State Government incentives to switch from old inefficient gas use to cleaner, more affordable renewable energy completely sidestep the roughly 30% of households in Victoria that are rentals.
To tackle the complexity of compelling the rental market to shut off fossil fuels and improve comfort, affordability and rental standards for energy use, without adding pressure to renters we are preparing the launch of a policy paper that steps through some carrot and stick incentives for rental fuel switching.
Developed in conversation with representatives of the Real Estate Institute of Victoria, renters, and energy and social policy experts, this report hopes to inform government decision making around how to make sure that renters are not left behind in the clean energy revolution.
We’ll update you when we’re ready to launch and would be delighted to send you a link to the finished report. We’ll also provide hard copies to state and federal portfolio holders in energy, housing and climate and follow up with meetings to drive home our recommendations.
Join our collective
Every month we join to meet with our supporters. If you wish you could do more to help stop the gas industry from ruining our planet, you can!
Already we have had one supporter help write the rental fuel switching report (with full credit for his input) and another is assisting with planning launch events. Be part of the magic!
Come to the next supporters’ meeting, online at 6:30pm Wednesday 5 July.
Find out what’s happening in the gas campaign, meet like minded people and find out how you can support the campaign to save the climate from methane.
Old, offshore and offgassing
Once an old gas well has been decommissioned and capped that should be the end of it. And yet through investigation by Offshore Gas campaigner Jeff Waters it has been revealed that that at least one of the retired gas wells has continued to leak gas into the atmosphere since it passed out of operation.
Santos’ extinct well in the Legendre gas field were capped and sealed from methane leakage over a decade ago. However Santos has admitted that stopping gas leaks from their retired platform is unfeasible and attempted to downplay the leaks as “nontoxic”, citing assessments undertaken by CSIRO. However, the division of the national science organisation that considers gas and its impacts, known as GISERA (Gas Industry Social and Environmental Research Alliance) is funded by gas industry dollars from 5 major unconventional gas operators including Santos. This conflict of interest calls into question the credibility of the gas industry’s self reporting mechanism. And as our campaigner Jeff points out, methane certainly is toxic to the climate.
With 873 wells positioned around Australia – 457 of which are still operational - and seismic blasting continuing in the hope of stationing more, we need better safeguards to ensure that the climate doesn’t have to keep paying for decades or even centuries of methane leakage. We also believe that not a single new gas well should be drilled at all, or at the very least until we are certain that all legacy wells are secure from further fugitive emissions.
Hydrogen Energy Supply Chain
Just when we thought that coal was finally on the way out, along comes hydrogen to give it a last gasp. The Hydrogen Energy Supply Chain is a project put forward by a multinational conglomerate including Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Royal Dutch Shell and AGL to gassify brown coal from Gippsland at the Loy Yang power station. From there it would be transported either by road or 150km of newly built pipeline (nobody seems to know which) to Westernport at Hastings where it would be liquified for export to Japan.
We recognise that this both a trojan horse for the dying coal industry and a potential Hindenburg disaster waiting to happen somewhere between central Gippsland, via Hastings and across the ocean to Japan.
I’m the primary signatory to this petition (please sign!).
For more information about this project check out our media release.
Disconnection fees (slight) win!
Following on from our – and others – submissions to the Gas Distribution Code of Practice review undertaken by the Essential Services Commission and informing the Australian Energy Regulator’s decision about managing gas distribution, we are pleased to see a cap on gas abolishment fees.
Currently it is free to connect to gas and until last month the cost of disconnection was skyrocketing to over $1000. We argued that costs should not be a barrier to disconnection and that in fact the cost of abolishment should be levied at point of connection, so that to connect to the gas network would cover the full cost of both connection and forecast disconnection costs.
The regulator met us nearly halfway and we can report that gas abolishment fees are now capped at $220 per connection. We will continue to fight for both a ban on new connections and free disconnections but in the meantime we’re happy if the gas companies are not. And they’re not. So, good.
Thank you!
Every time we send out an eNews bulletin we are delighted by questions and interest in the stories we publish. Often we have people contact us asking for help in tackling disconnection issues so we’re pleased we’ve been able to contribute to managing that ridiculous expense. Whatever you’re writing about, it’s great to see how many people are engaged in the issues around climate and energy justice. Your input helps inform our work and encourages us to keep going.
If you have questions, concerns or suggestions please don’t hesitate to reply to this email and know that we’re always so happy to hear from you.
Thank you for your support. We will keep doing what we can to hold decision makers accountable for energy justice for all.
Until next time!
For the Earth,
Freja Leonard
No More Gas campaign coordinator
We run on the smell of a (vegetable) oily rag - please support our work!
I acknowledge that wherever we are we are living and working on stolen land and in deep respect of First Nations Peoples everywhere. This newsletter written and posted from Boon Wurrung land in the Kulin nation.
