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Your weekly community newspaper covering the entire Western Port region For all advertising and editorial, call 03 THE latest performance protest against AGLâs plans for a gas import terminal at Crib Point was staged on Monday last week (22 March) with a troupe dressed as sybils, female prophets, from ancient Greece. Demonstrating their opposition to the plan now in the hands of the state government, the Sybil Disobedients caught a bus from Bittern to Docklands, Melbourne saying they represented âthousands of concerned ordinary people living on the Mornington Peninsula and Victorian regional towns who want our governments to recognise that we are in a climate emergencyâ. The 12 Sybils (men and women) acted out a rehearsed performance Exit Gas - as part of a larger âautumn weekâ demonstration by Extinction Rebellion Australia. Kerri McCafferty, a Mornington Peninsula Shire councillor and spokesperson for the Westernport XR group, said the demonstration was a âmost wonderful opportunity ⌠to lead change and say no to gasâ. âOur government could show all Victorians how we can support new
clean energy generation and lower our carbon emissions, just like we see happening overseas,â Cr McCafferty, who narrated the Sybilsâ performance and led the troupe around the Docklands concourse, said. The Docklands protest came one week after Cr McCafferty joined the 500-strong March 4 Justice at Rosebud, along with the mayor Cr Despi OâConnor and deputy mayor Cr Sarah Race (âThe long march that united a nationâ The News 23/3/21). The shire is also opposed to the gas import terminal and other performance-type demonstrations have included protesters dressed as angels standing among Western Portâs mangroves and wetsuits being worn on the steps of parliament house (âMud no obstacle for angelsâ fear of treadâ The News 23/2/21, âAnti-gas protesters fear Western Port wipeoutâ 16/3/21). The Sybil Disobedients say giving AGL the go ahead to import liquified natural gas (LNG) would âfurther entrench the stateâs reliance on polluting carbon-based energy instead of backing emerging, renewable energyâ. Keith Platt
Wednesday 31 March 2021
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Exit Gas, a performance protest
WESTERNPORT Extinction Rebellion group, the Sybil Disobedients, perform their anti-AGL gas terminal protest at Docklands. Picture: Julian Meehan
Hydrogen set to go from Hastings Keith Platt keith@mpnews.com.au HYDROGEN made from brown coal in the Latrobe Valley is now been liquified at Hastings before being shipped to Japan. The production is an essential part of the hydrogen energy supply chain (HESC) and is described as âa great leap forward for [Australiaâs] ambition to be a key player in the emerging global hydrogen economyâ. The brown coal-to-hydrogen projectâs commercial partners, led by Kawasaki Heavy Industries, are being backed by the federal and state governments, who each provided $50 million
towards the $500m pilot, as well as the Japanese government. While carbon emissions are being released into the atmosphere during the pilot phase, the projectâs partners say if âcommercialisedâ the CO2 will be transported and stored using carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The pilot project aims to demonstrate an âend-to-end supply chainâ between Australia and Japan. âRather than entering the atmosphere, CO2 emissions will be safely stored in rocks 1.5 kilometres beneath Bass Strait, similar to the way oil and gas has been trapped naturally for millions of years,â the consortium stated on 12 March when announcing the start of operations at Hastings.
Environmental groups say CCS technology is yet to be proved viable in the long term and that Australia is being left to deal with the emissions while Japan gets âclean fuelâ. The consortium estimates a commercial-scale HESC project could produce 225,000 tonnes of clean hydrogen annually with carbon capture and storage. âWe estimate our project could reduce CO2 emissions by 1.8 million tonnes per year, equivalent to the emissions of some 350,000 petrol cars,â Jeremy Stone of J-POWER Latrobe Valley said. The state government says the project has the potential to provide âclean hydrogenâ for domestic use as well as encourage âa new, global export indus-
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try with huge local economic benefitsâ. âThe next major HESC Pilot development will be the first shipment of hydrogen between Australia and Japan, aboard the worldâs first purposebuilt liquefied hydrogen carrier, the Suiso Frontier,â Hirofumi Kawazoe, of Hydrogen Engineering Australia (a Melbourne-based Kawasakiâs subsidiary), said. âThe eyes of the world will be on Victoria, when shipments of liquefied hydrogen commence this year.â Meanwhile, Queensland and South Australia are backing the production of hydrogen, but from water using solar or wind power (âGreen hydrogen nearly affordableâ The News 4/5/20). Environment Victoriaâs campaigns
manager Dr Nicholas Aberle sees the Latrobe Valley pilot project as âproblematic as it could be the thin end of the wedgeâ. Dr Aberle had âno doubtâ that hydrogen would be part of the energy supply chain in the future, âbut this is not green hydrogen, the race is really over before itâs startedâ. âCoal to hydrogen remains a shortterm and polluting source of energy. The future will no doubt involve growing use of hydrogen as a fuel, but it needs to be clean hydrogen. âProducing hydrogen from renewable energy will soon be cost-competitive and will always be cleaner and less risky than using coal.â
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