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Green Capital: What About Gas?

  • 25 March 2015
  • 7:30 AM - 9:30 AM
  • Melbourne

GREEN CAPITAL: WHAT ABOUT GAS?



‘What About Gas?’ is Green Capital’s feature business forum series for 2015, addressing Australia’s hottest contemporary energy challenge, with breakfast events in Melbourne (March 25) and Sydney (April 22).

Our forums take on the tough integration of economic, environmental and social issues. Debates span the implications for business, governments and civil society as the Australian economy confronts a transition to a still prosperous, but low-carbon, low-waste future. Our approach is holistic, robust, independent and solutions-centric, engaging top voices across the spectrum of views and vested interests. We believe that quality data, dialogue and debate can open minds, shift agendas and change outcomes for the better.


MELBOURNE

Onshore gas in Victoria hangs in the political balance, with the new Labor Government extending a moratorium on controversial ‘fracking’ to cover all exploration and run to mid-2016. Community opponents are celebrating, but the industrial and manufacturing business sector warns it could lose $23 billion by 2020 unless more gas flows, and home gas bills are set to rise sharply. What’s the real story?


Registration


How is gas failing the sustainable development test?
The role for natural gas in Australia’s energy future is a classic sustainability challenge. It’s defined by a strategically complex and conflicting mix of economic, social and environmental factors, foremost among them being energy supply security and climate change, with $200 billion in new infrastructure investment at stake. But instead of broad support for a rise of gas, there’s a deep breakdown in trust between key stakeholders across government, business and civil society.

Why is gas such a hot issue?
The gas debate is not just between pro-development and anti-development stakeholders. It’s between governments and many citizens, workers, landholders and enterprises. It’s between the gas industry and farmers, and local communities, and the guardians of heritage and natural capital. And between the gas industry and other industrial and manufacturing players that rely on gas as a fuel and raw ingredient, and the employees in those businesses, and also investors of all sizes and everyday household consumers.

What is a sustainable energy mix?
Fossil fuel opponents in Australia and internationally are sniffing vulnerability from once all-powerful energy industries, gas and oil as well as their number one target, coal. A ‘no fossil fuels at all’ groundswell is gaining strength. Meanwhile, advocates for a sustainable energy role for gas see it displacing more-polluting coal and supporting an accelerated rise of cleaner renewables, or even being an anchor fuel in its own right for a low-carbon future if carbon capture and storage (CCS) can be made to work.

What are the threshold questions for gas?
Green Capital’s ‘What About Gas?’ business forum series is asking:
Positioned between coal and renewable energy, what is the role for gas in the energy mix for a 21st century transition to a low-carbon future by circa 2050?
What is required for a world’s-best environmental and social practice gas industry in Australia and the Pacific region, in particular addressing both conventional natural gas and also unconventional gas (i.e. coal seam gas, and shale and tight rock gas)?
Is there potential for a ’sustainability accord’ on the role of gas that would significantly meet the needs of key economic, social and environmental stakeholders? And if so, how could this be advanced?

Can the gas debacle be fixed?
There are world’s best practice ways to deal with such challenges, a sustainable development toolkit featuring scenario-based planning, systems thinking, cumulative impact assessment, independent third-party verification, comprehensive stakeholder engagement and alliance-building, and the concept of corporations or industries earning a ‘social licence’ to operate. We’ll never know what difference this toolkit would have made if applied from the start, but it’s incredibly hard to restore trust once it has been lost.

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