IEEFA Opposes Australian Senate Bill Enabling Carbon Dioxide Imports for Sea Burial

The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis has submitted formal opposition to proposed amendments to Australia's Environment Protection (Sea Dumping) Act 1981 that would permit the import of carbon dioxide from other countries for geological storage beneath the Australian seabed. IEEFA argues the bill relies on a technology — carbon capture and storage — with a 50-year record of underperformance and would expose Australian taxpayers to unquantified financial and legal liability while allowing gas producers to open new fields and increase emissions.

Global energy-related CO2 emissions totalled 36.8 gigatonnes in 2022, while all operational CCS projects worldwide sequestered a combined total of approximately 40 million tonnes — equivalent to roughly 0.1% of annual emissions. IEEFA argues this disparity makes CCS largely irrelevant to the scale of climate action required. The proposed legislation also ignores that CCS applies only to Scope 1 emissions from gas extraction and processing, while 85% to 90% of total emissions from oil and gas come from Scope 3 combustion by end consumers — emissions that CCS does nothing to address.

The submission highlights Australia's own Gorgon CCS project as a domestic precedent for CCS failure. Reports emerging during the submission process indicated that Gorgon's CO2 capture rate in 2023 would be lower than in any previous year, and that operator Chevron would incur additional costs modifying injection wells in an ongoing effort to approach the 80% capture rate required under its operating conditions. IEEFA's concurrent research on Norway's Sleipner and Snohvit projects documented serious geological containment risks at two of the global industry's most cited CCS success stories.

IEEFA urges the Senate to reject the amendments as currently drafted, noting the bill would jeopardise Australia's relatively modest 2030 emissions reduction targets and Safeguard Mechanism objectives. The submission calls for amendments to strengthen legal and environmental protections, transparency requirements, and accountability mechanisms for any transboundary CCS projects — with specific reference to Santos's proposed Bayu-Undan CCS project in the Timor Sea, which involves CO2 sourced from Australia, stored in Timor-Leste's maritime territory, and operated by a private company under unresolved liability arrangements.

Key figure — 36.8 gigatonnes — global energy-related CO2 emissions in 2022, compared to approximately 40 million tonnes sequestered by all CCS projects worldwide