By Mick Le Moignan
THE proposal to build a £2–3 billion offshore wind farm in territorial waters south-west of Jersey deserves the thorough research and feasibility surveys that the environment minister, Deputy Steve Luce, says are being conducted.
Environmental and financial considerations are not easy to weigh in the balance.
Renewable power is clearly vital to the future for all of us; given high public expenditure and the probable slow stagnation and decline of its finance industry, Jersey urgently needs a fresh source of revenue. If the figures stack up, the regrettable impact on views from Corbière and the harm to marine life may be judged acceptable collateral damage.
Australia has a similar decision to make, where the stakes are even higher, both financially and environmentally. In a large industrial complex on the north-west coast, Woodside Energy has been converting massive undersea gas deposits to liquid natural gas (LNG) since 1980. Their licence comes up for renewal in 2030. The Albanese government prudently “kicked the can down the road” and postponed the difficult decision before the April election, which they won in a landslide (94 seats out of 150).
Environmentalists hoped Albanese would use his newfound authority to close the plant and stop the pollution. However, it generated $63 billion in exports of LNG in 2023, so commercial interests and the West Australian Labor government desperately wanted him to give it the green light – and he has agreed.
The financial arguments in favour of the project are obvious – although there are serious concerns about how fairly the windfall is shared between the workforce, the Australian Tax Office, and Woodside’s largely overseas shareholders.
The environmental arguments against the venture are also compelling: the gas hub and its products are expected to generate 90 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions each year – more than New Zealand’s 76.4 million tonnes per annum in 2023. Over its projected lifespan, that will amount to four billion tonnes, equivalent to Australia’s total emissions over ten years.
South Australia’s government recently tried to boost its climate credentials by bidding to host the UN’s COP-31 climate conference in Adelaide in November 2026. If the bid is successful, some explanations will be required.
The cultural arguments against the hub are extraordinary – and eloquently summarised in a 13-minute film produced by the Australia Institute and available online, “The Fight to Save Murujuga”.
Woodside’s heavily polluting complex, which it and other companies aim to make “the largest petrochemical development in the southern hemisphere”, is situated on the Murujuga peninsula, closely adjacent to the world’s largest collection of more than a million petroglyphs, or rock art images, some of which are eight times older than the Pyramids of Egypt.
Professor Ben Smith, professor of archaeology at the University of Western Australia and president of the International Committee on Rock Art, says: “This is the most important rock art site in the world… with extinct animals and the world’s oldest depictions of the human face.”
Incredibly, it has taken just the past 40 years for industrial emissions of greenhouse gases, including 13,000 tonnes per annum of nitrous oxide, to make the rock porous and to change its pH from alkaline to acidic. This is “actively degrading the rock surfaces” and eating away the natural varnish which has protected the images for over 50,000 years.
UNESCO recently refused the Australian government’s request for a World Heritage listing because of this damage and the likelihood of it getting worse.
Raelene Cooper, a traditional custodian, is appalled at the prospect of her cultural heritage being destroyed. She likens it to “a Mona Lisa – in a natural landscape. This is our Bible; it’s our cathedral; it’s who we are.”
Another Aboriginal elder, Esther Montgomery, says that, for her people, the destruction of the rock art would be “like blowing the Sydney Opera House to smithereens”.
The Federal and West Australian governments commissioned an 800-page report and prudently delayed publication until after the election. The report exonerated Woodside and blamed the damage to the rock art on “historic emissions from an old power station” at nearby Dampier.
The newly appointed environment minister, Murray Watt, conferred with the premier of Western Australia but did not visit Murujuga before issuing his decision. He claims the written agreement will impose stringent conditions on Woodside, but he has not made them public.
The most pertinent argument of all, made by the writer, producer and narrator of the Australia Institute’s film, Stephen Long, is that “the gas plants and the petrochemical plant that feeds on the gas don’t need to be at Murujuga”.
Dr Ken Mulvany, an archaeologist and anthropologist who has been recording and cataloguing the ancient petroglyphs at Murujuga “on and off for 45 years”, points out that “the gas is offshore, along our continental shelf, 100km away from here, at the closest.
Some of the gas they’re wanting to ship in is 800km from here. Industry can go anywhere and still process those resources. They don’t have to be here.”
Professor Smith says the anticipated 50-year lifespan of the plant is “enough time to lose a significant proportion of the rock art at Murujuga, at current levels of pollution”. He calls it “a preventable disaster… which we could stop at any point if we had the political will to do it”.
With such a big majority, Labor’s political will is clearly absent. A hung parliament, where the Greens and independents held the balance of power, would have forced Albanese to an environmental compromise.
The colossal export earnings from LNG and the opportunity to ease Australia’s transition from fossil fuels to renewable power probably meant a licence extension was unavoidable – but why not for ten years, instead of 40, and why not require Woodside to move the plant to a less destructive site?
I don’t expect answers to these questions – but transparency is vital to such major decisions – and they are far too important to be left to the politicians. When Jersey’s wind farm report comes out, every Jersey voter needs to think about the pros and cons.
Democracy should not be taken for granted: it carries responsibilities as well as privileges.
