<\/p>\n
The Middle Arm Precinct will be located on Darwin Harbour.\u00a0 (Supplied)<\/p>\n
The CO2 would be unloaded from ships into storage tanks with a capacity of at least 5 million tonnes and then eventually pumped via a pipeline into deep underground reservoirs in the seabed off the coast of Darwin for permanent storage.<\/p>\n
Every year, humans pump billions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere<\/a>, primarily through burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas, which is driving global temperatures to record levels<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change<\/a> has repeatedly warned that to prevent the most severe impacts of climate change, global emissions must fall to net zero by 2050<\/a>.<\/p>\n Matthias Raab, a geoscientist and the chief executive of CO2CRC, one of Australia’s leading carbon capture and storage (CCS) research and development companies, said “geological carbon storage” was one of the key solutions.<\/p>\n Matthias Raab (left) says CO2CRC has been operating a geological carbon storage research project in Australia for over 16 years. (Supplied: CO2CRC\u00a0)<\/p>\n “Reducing carbon dioxide emissions globally is one of the greatest priorities of our generation,” he said.<\/p>\n “But not every country [can] store carbon dioxide deep under our feet.”<\/p>\n Dr Raab said the NT had two offshore locations that could store “decades, if not centuries” worth of CO2 \u2014 in the Bonaparte Basin and the depleted Bayu-Undan gas field.<\/p>\n “In terms of the economic opportunity, the scale is enormous,” he said.<\/p>\n Leak poses ‘suffocation’ risk<\/p>\n But CCS technology \u2014 essentially sucking pollution out of the atmosphere and trapping it somewhere \u2014 is still unproven at scale<\/a>.<\/p>\n Environment Centre NT director Kirsty Howey said importing CO2 from other countries risked turning Darwin into “a dumping ground for the world’s climate pollution.”<\/p>\n “We’re talking about these projects happening smack bang in the middle of Darwin Harbour, just a few kilometres from where people live,” she said.<\/p>\n Kirsty Howey say the NT government has lost the public’s trust that it will “do the right thing”. (ABC News: Tristan Hooft)<\/p>\n “If there’s a rupture or a leak, it’s not like methane, which disappears into the air, [the CO2] could actually move over the suburbs of Palmerston or Darwin and suffocate human populations.<\/p>\n “We have had scandal after scandal<\/a> that have seriously undermined the public’s trust in the NT government to do the right thing and protect the environment and communities.<\/p>\n “This is a fig leaf for mass expansion of the fossil fuel industry.”<\/p>\n The NT government and Vopak declined to comment.<\/p>\n Inpex CCS plans underway<\/p>\n According to a report by the Climate Council, more than $4 billion in public money has been spent on developing CCS globally since 2003, yet it has “consistently failed to deliver promised results.”<\/p>\n This month, Inpex lodged plans with the federal Environment Department to advance a CCS project in the Bonaparte Gulf, about 250 kilometres south-west of Darwin.<\/p>\n The joint venture with Santos would be the first offshore CCS project in Australia and the biggest.<\/p>\n Japanese company Inpex in planning to build an offshore CCS project in the Bonaparte Gulf.\u00a0 (ABC News: Dane Hirst)<\/p>\n Dr Raab said it was important Australia forged ahead with “innovative” projects like Inpex’s as other countries accelerated their investment in the industry.<\/p>\n He said he was also confident that vast amounts of CO2 could be stored safely “for millions of years”.<\/p>\n While the industry is still in the early stages of development, he pointed to studies that suggest a $600 billion opportunity for Australia<\/a> to become a carbon storage hub over the next three decades.<\/p>\n Carbon capture a solution or distraction?<\/a><\/p>\n Amid the spinifex on a remote WA island looms Chevron’s troubled carbon capture facility. The role the technology might play in cutting greenhouse gas emissions is likely to get a fresh airing at global climate talks in Azerbaijan.<\/p>\n Two CCS projects are already in operation elsewhere in the country, but neither has achieved complete success.<\/p>\n Gorgon, in Western Australia, has stored large volumes of CO2 but has struggled to meet its original targets<\/a>, while Moomba in South Australia is performing well so far but is still in its first year of operation and remains unproven at scale<\/a>.<\/p>\n Dr Raab said Federal and Northern Territory laws needed to allow Australia to import CO2 from other countries were still being developed.<\/p>\n “The federal government has consulted widely, has considered the input from the industry, and is in the process of finalising bilateral agreements with our neighbouring countries,” Dr Raab said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An ambitious plan for the Northern Territory to become one of the first places in the world to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,179364,179362,22114,179363,27932,6045,126467,179371,5249,179365,179366,13442,75,179367,6396,154448,179369,146792,179370,179360,19182,17188,16795,25902,6348,179368,1294,64172,128,25487,179361,179359],"class_list":["post-317944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bonaparte","tag-carbon-capture-and-storage","tag-carbon-dioxide","tag-ccs","tag-change","tag-climate","tag-co2","tag-co2crc","tag-darwin","tag-dumping-ground","tag-ecnt","tag-emissions","tag-environment","tag-environment-centre","tag-greenhouse-gas","tag-harbour","tag-howey","tag-inpex","tag-ipcc","tag-middle-arm","tag-net-zero","tag-nt-government","tag-oil-and-gas","tag-palmerston","tag-pollution","tag-raab","tag-risk","tag-santos","tag-science","tag-suffocation","tag-sustainable-hub","tag-vopak"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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