Individual fossil fuel projects can no longer be considered too small to matter according to new Australian research linking each new investment in coal and gas extraction with measurable increases in global temperatures.
Published today in the Nature journal Climate Action, climate scientists from six Australian universities, including the University of Melbourne, have revealed findings that debunk claims individual fossil fuel projects have little impact on global warming.
The research led by the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century focussed on the Scarborough gas project in Northwest Australia. It found that the project alone is estimated to lead to an increase of approximately 0.00039°C in global temperature from 876 million tonnes of CO2 emissions.
University of Melbourne Associate Professor Andrew King from the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences explained that while 0.00039°C of additional warming may seem relatively small, its impacts on society and the environment are actually large.
"This degree of warming could expose over half a million people to unprecedented extreme heat," Associate Professor King said.
"Approximately 16 million corals in the Great Barrier Reef would be lost in more frequent mass bleaching event and we would expect to see hundreds of additional deaths due to extreme heat in Europe alone."
According to the researchers, most of Australia's new fossil fuel projects, including the Scarborough gas project, describe anticipated greenhouse gas outputs as negligible in the context of global emissions with claims of being unable to measure contributions to global warming.
Associate Professor King said the study sharply contradicts this.
"We used robust methodology known as the Transient Climate Response to CO2 Emissions (TCRE) to calculate emissions from individual projects, and this showed emission levels and impacts far from negligible," Associate Professor King said.
"In the case of the Scarborough project, our findings show that additional warming caused by CO2 emissions will persist for multiple decades to centuries and cause long-term environmental and social impacts."
The TCRE is a major tool of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and uses a combination of scientific understanding of the earth system, direct observations and climate model simulations.
The researchers calculated that the 876 Mt of CO2 emissions from the Scarborough gas project would be expected to cause approximately 0.00039°C of additional global warming, with 66–100% likelihood of causing global warming of between 0.00024°C and 0.00055°C.
The team found that anticipated emissions from the Scarborough project alone will comprise almost half (49 per cent) of Australia's entire annual CO2 emissions budget by 2049.
Beyond 2050, all emissions from the Scarborough project would require durable CO2 removal from the atmosphere if Australia was to meet its emissions reduction targets, which would require a huge increase in the effectiveness and scale of carbon capture and storage technology.
Liquified Natural Gas production from the Scarborough field is expected to start in 2026 and continue for 31 years, with the potential for further expansion.
"This research provides a science-based foundation that can be employed by companies and governments in quantifying the consequences of fossil fuel production and use, and in assessing whether these projects fall within acceptable levels of environmental and societal risk," said Dr Nicola Maher from the Australian National University.
Led by the 21st Century Weather, the work was a collaboration between the Australian National University, the University of Melbourne, the Climate Change Research Centre and School of Law at the University of New South Wales, the University of Adelaide, James Cook University, and the University of Oxford in the UK.
The study "Quantifying the regional to global climate impacts of individual fossil fuel projects to inform decision-making" has been published in Climate Action.
