Western Port An independent voice for the community
FREE
Your weekly community newspaper covering the entire Western Port region For all advertising and editorial, call 03 THE latest performance protest against AGL’s 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 “thousands 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 emergency”. The 12 Sybils (men and women) acted out a rehearsed performance Exit Gas - as part of a larger “autumn week” demonstration by Extinction Rebellion Australia. Kerri McCafferty, a Mornington Peninsula Shire councillor and spokesperson for the Westernport XR group, said the demonstration was a “most wonderful opportunity … to lead change and say no to gas”. “Our government could show all Victorians how we can support new
clean energy generation and lower our carbon emissions, just like we see happening overseas,” Cr McCafferty, who narrated the Sybils’ 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 O’Connor and deputy mayor Cr Sarah Race (“The long march that united a nation” 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 Port’s mangroves and wetsuits being worn on the steps of parliament house (“Mud no obstacle for angels’ fear of tread” The News 23/2/21, “Anti-gas protesters fear Western Port wipeout” 16/3/21). The Sybil Disobedients say giving AGL the go ahead to import liquified natural gas (LNG) would “further entrench the state’s reliance on polluting carbon-based energy instead of backing emerging, renewable energy”. Keith Platt
Wednesday 31 March 2021
5974 9000 or email: team@mpnews.com.au www.mpnews.com.au
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 “a great leap forward for [Australia’s] ambition to be a key player in the emerging global hydrogen economy”. The brown coal-to-hydrogen project’s 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 project’s partners say if “commercialised” the CO2 will be transported and stored using carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The pilot project aims to demonstrate an “end-to-end supply chain” between Australia and Japan. “Rather 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,” 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 “clean fuel”. The consortium estimates a commercial-scale HESC project could produce 225,000 tonnes of clean hydrogen annually with carbon capture and storage. “We estimate our project could reduce CO2 emissions by 1.8 million tonnes per year, equivalent to the emissions of some 350,000 petrol cars,” Jeremy Stone of J-POWER Latrobe Valley said. The state government says the project has the potential to provide “clean hydrogen” for domestic use as well as encourage “a new, global export indus-
COME AND SEE THE CHICKENS ROAMING FREE IN THE PADDOCK!
try with huge local economic benefits”. “The next major HESC Pilot development will be the first shipment of hydrogen between Australia and Japan, aboard the world’s first purposebuilt liquefied hydrogen carrier, the Suiso Frontier,” Hirofumi Kawazoe, of Hydrogen Engineering Australia (a Melbourne-based Kawasaki’s subsidiary), said. “The eyes of the world will be on Victoria, when shipments of liquefied hydrogen commence this year.” Meanwhile, Queensland and South Australia are backing the production of hydrogen, but from water using solar or wind power (“Green hydrogen nearly affordable” The News 4/5/20). Environment Victoria’s campaigns
manager Dr Nicholas Aberle sees the Latrobe Valley pilot project as “problematic as it could be the thin end of the wedge”. Dr Aberle had “no doubt” that hydrogen would be part of the energy supply chain in the future, “but this is not green hydrogen, the race is really over before it’s started”. “Coal 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. “Producing hydrogen from renewable energy will soon be cost-competitive and will always be cleaner and less risky than using coal.”
BARN DOOR SALES MONDAY TO FRIDAY 8AM - 4.30PM AND SATURDAYS 8AM - 12.30PM
Our farm is family owned and managed. We have been producing quality eggs for over 40 years, supplying the public, restaurants and other businesses on the peninsula. Eggs are collected 365 days a year so you can be assured that you are buying the freshest eggs with the best yolk and flavour. Retail and Wholesale from our barn door.
5977 5405
220 Eramosa Road West, Moorooduc. corner of Binnak Way email: admin@somervilleeggfarm.com.au