Woodside’s Burrup Hub an irredeemable threat to WA’s oceans and marine life. It’s also the biggest fossil fuel threat in Australia and the fifth most polluting gas project in the world.
The Burrup Hub project is what Woodside calls its plan to drill the Scarborough gas field (which is already well under construction), drill the Browse gas field underneath Scott Reef and extend the life of a massive gas plant called the North West Shelf LNG Plant, which processes gas for export.
The Burrup Hub represents an irredeemable threat to Western Australia’s marine life – putting 54 threatened species and up to 12 marine parks at risk. But the destruction won’t end there – the project will emit over 6.1 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. Most of the gas from the Burrup Hub will be sold overseas.
Greenpeace Australia Pacific has been working for over 2 years to stop the Burrup Hub – it is Australia’s biggest climate threat, and poses catastrophic risks to the pristine environment of WA.
The story so far
Fossil fuel company Woodside has had its sights set on the Browse gas field for a long time. The company’s first attempt to drill it was defeated by a huge community campaign centred in the Kimberley in northern Western Australia. Then in 2019, Woodside was back – this time with a plan to pipe the Browse gas onshore to its existing LNG processing plant, extending its life until the 2070s.
The first stage of Woodside’s Burrup Hub, Scarborough, is under construction, with 30 gas wells being drilled off the coast of Exmouth, WA. Woodside has risked killing whales by deafening them with seismic blasting, dug up endangered turtle habitat, and when it is complete, Scarborough puts UNESCO-protected Ningaloo Reef within the danger zone for an oil spill.
Now, Woodside is proposing the next stage of the Burrup Hub: up to 50 more gas wells to be drilled around Scott Reef. The closest well will be just over 2km from the edge of the reef, with Woodside planning to extract gas from directly underneath the coral reef. The void left after removing the gas is likely to cause the reef to sink.
Scott Reef is a globally significant marine ecosystem, home to hundreds of species, including sea snakes, sharks, rays and sawfish. It provides critical habitat to endangered pygmy blue whales and vulnerable green turtles.
The new gas from Browse needs to be processed before it could be sent overseas. So, Woodside hopes to extend the life of its ageing North West Shelf LNG plant until the 2070s.
Woodside Has Not Won Yet
While Scarborough is currently being drilled, Woodside needs environmental approvals from Federal Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek, and WA Environment Minister, Reece Whitby, to drill for new gas at Browse and extend the life of the North West Shelf LNG Plant.
Despite the accelerating climate crisis and Australia’s commitment to phase out of fossil fuels, projects like the Burrup Hub can still be approved because Woodside only needs to account for emissions on Australian territory. Because Woodside would sell over 80 per cent of the gas it drills from the Burrup Hub overseas (most of it royalty-free), it doesn’t need to include the emissions from gas burnt outside Australia when getting environmental approvals.
An industry source has confirmed to the media that Western Australia’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has essentially written off the company’s Browse project as too dangerous to proceed. This almost never happens under our current environmental and climate laws. These revelations make clear what we’ve long known to be true—that Woodside’s disastrous Burrup Hub project, including its Browse site, is likely to be a disaster for our precious environment, our reefs and threatened species.
Almost half a million Greenpeace supporters have signed our petition calling on Minister Plibersek to rule out the project, and the chorus against the Burrup Hub project is growing stronger every year.
And here is how we win
There is a clear path to stopping mega gas projects like the Burrup Hub – using the Federal environmental protections we do have in place, which protect ‘unique plants, animals, habitats and places’, to stop Woodside’s plans.
There are also state laws in WA that protect the environment. The WA EPA has stated they have serious concerns about Browse, and their view is that it poses an ‘unacceptable’ risk to the environment.
That is why Greenpeace AP is doing everything we can to document the pristine biodiversity of Scott Reef, showing just how critical it is to protect our unique oceans and marine life.
The Environment Ministers in Perth and Canberra need to hear how much Australians value our natural environment and want it protected. Without public outcry, the only voices politicians hear is Woodside and the fossil fuel lobby, who seek to downplay and minimise the environmental threat of offshore gas drilling.
Marine scientists, NGOs and Greenpeace have examined Woodside’s proposal closely and have identified several severe threats to our environment that could convince the Minister to say ‘no’ to the Burrup Hub on environmental grounds. The risks include:
- The sinking of Scott Reef into the ocean (because the gas is extracted from underneath it) causing turtle nesting grounds to wash away;
- Underwater noise pollution impacting whale foraging and migration;
- Chemical dumping from the construction phase and production rigs poisoning plankton, fish and marine turtles;
- Artificial lighting and flaring (burning off released gas) disorientating turtle hatchlings and sea birds
- A gas and oil spill, covering Scott Reef and surrounding marine parks in condensate, creating an environmental catastrophe.
The decision of our Governments to approve or reject the Burrup Hub project will define their environmental legacy for decades to come.
Burrup Hub: Irredeemably Bad
While the federal government made a disappointing commitment to continue approving fossil gas drilling when it released its gas strategy, the Burrup Hub is in its own category of ‘bad’, because:
- Scott Reef is a pristine and idyllic coral atoll teaming with marine life and providing critical habitat for threatened species;
- The Burrup Hub’s Browse project is an enormous new and exceptionally dirty gas field;
- Most of the gas will be sold overseas, royalty-free;
- The community in WA are rallying against the project to protect our oceans; and
- The Government wants to invest in a future made in Australia using clean energy, not lock Australia into gas until 2070.
But to defeat Woodside’s expensive PR and army of lobbyists, we need to use people-power to show our Government that Australians are united behind one message: we must protect our environment from the Burrup Hub mega gas project.
What is next for Greenpeace
The news that the WA EPA agrees that Browse is a uniquely terrible idea has, quite literally, added wind in the sails of our campaign to Stop Woodside.
Right now, our new campaign vessel, the Oceania, is on its way to Western Australia, where we will be connecting with the growing community who oppose Woodside’s disastrous Burrup Hub, and amplifying their calls to stop this monstrous project.
In Canberra, we will be taking the voices of the almost half a million Australians who have signed our petition to stop the Burrup Hub directly to Parliament. We will send a message to our elected leaders, loud and clear, that Australians reject Woodside’s Burrup Hub.
Defeating the Burrup Hub would be one of the single most effective things we can do to fight for a safer climate, and a thriving environment.
Will you help?
As COP30 reaches its midway point in the Brazilian city of Belém, Carbon Brief has hosted its second “ask us anything” webinar to exclusively answer questions submitted by holders of the Insider Pass.
The webinar kicked off with an overview of where the negotiations are on Day 8, plus what it was like to be among the 70,000-strong “people’s march” on Saturday.
At present, there are 44 agreed texts at COP30, with many negotiating streams remaining highly contested, as shown by Carbon Brief’s live text tracker.
Topics discussed during the webinar included the potential of a “cover text” at COP30, plus updates on negotiations such as the global goal on adaptation and the just-transition work programme.
Journalists also answered questions on the potential for a “fossil-fuel phaseout roadmap”, the impact of finance – including the Baku to Belém roadmap, which was released the week before COP30 – and Article 6.
The webinar was moderated by Carbon Brief’s director and editor, Leo Hickman, and featured six of our journalists – half of them on the ground in Belém – covering all elements of the summit:
- Dr Simon Evans – deputy editor and senior policy editor
- Daisy Dunne – associate editor
- Josh Gabbatiss – policy correspondent
- Orla Dwyer – food, land and nature reporter
- Aruna Chandrasekhar – land, food systems and nature journalist
- Molly Lempriere – policy section editor
A recording of the webinar (below) is now available to watch on YouTube.
Watch Carbon Brief’s first COP30 “ask us anything” webinar here.
The post COP30: Carbon Brief’s second ‘ask us anything’ webinar appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Mohamed Adow is the Founder and Director of Power Shift Africa
A sobering truth hangs over the COP30 climate talks in Belém: negotiators are discussing adaptation indicators with the enthusiasm of technocrats while quietly starving frontline communities of the resources they need to survive.
The UN’s latest adaptation gap report could not be clearer. Needs are skyrocketing. Finance is collapsing. And yet the global community continues to debate how to measure progress, rather than how to enable it. They act as if weighing a cow will make it fatter, rather than giving it any food.
This contradiction exposes the heart of the climate crisis: adaptation is not merely a technical challenge; it is a political and moral one. Every finance gap is a justice gap. Behind every unmet target are farmers who cannot plant, families who cannot rebuild, and communities forced into displacement because “resilience” was promised but never delivered.
Adaptation is the difference between dignity and despair. It determines whether societies can endure rising temperatures, intensifying floods, or prolonged droughts — or whether they are pushed beyond the limits of survival.
Yet, as negotiators haggle over the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) and its indicators, the foundations needed to achieve these goals are crumbling. How do we talk about climate-resilient development when the means to achieve it are drying up? How do we measure resilience while draining the very resources that make resilience possible?
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COP30 Bulletin Day 5: COP30 could greenlight work on a fossil fuel transition roadmap
At the climate talks in Belém, governments are considering whether to launch a process to craft a roadmap and how that might look -
COP30 Bulletin Day 6: First week ends with a colourful march and much work left to do
UN climate chief Simon Stiell tells governments “to give a little to get a lot”, as many thorny issues remain for ministers to resolve next week
At COP30, countries must resist the impulse to rush through a weak indicator framework simply to claim progress. This would give us a system that measures activity, not impact. – that measures paperwork, not protection.
Africa is championing a fit for purpose GGA, but some have misunderstood and wrongly accused it of stalling the GGA process. But Africa is not delaying adaptation work. Africa is living adaptation every day. For us, adaptation is not a choice or a policy preference or an interesting side issue. It is an existential threat that is already reshaping livelihoods, economies, and ecosystems.
Africa needs this COP to get the GGA right. What we reject is an approach that turns adaptation into an exercise in reporting rather than a vehicle for survival.
A meaningful GGA must track whether finance actually reaches those who need it, whether technologies are shared equitably, and whether vulnerable countries are being supported to build early-warning systems, climate-resilient infrastructure, water security, and heat-resilient health systems. Without this backbone of finance and technology-sharing by the rich world, adaptation indicators become little more than an empty checklist.
And this is where COP30 stands at a crossroads. If rich countries succeed in pushing through a set of indicators that sideline finance, it will confirm that the world’s poorest are once again being asked to run a race with no shoes. No community can adapt without resources. No farmer can withstand worsening heatwaves without irrigation and drought-resistant seeds. No coastal town can protect its people without early-warning systems and resilient infrastructure. To pretend otherwise is not merely flawed policy; it is a profound injustice.
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Global South’s climate adaptation bill to top $300 billion a year by 2035: UN
Warning over massive shortfall in climate adaptation funding comes days before COP30 in Brazil, where the issue is set to be a major theme
Some will argue that indicators and finance should remain separate discussions. But this is a fiction. You cannot track progress on adaptation without the means to adapt. Adaptation is where political decisions determine whether people live safely or suffer needlessly.
The world is not short of evidence of this suffering, it is short of political courage. Extreme weather displaces more than 30 million people a year, with Africa bearing the brunt. While communities rebuild with scarce resources, developed countries continue to cut aid or repackage support as loans which shackles poor countries with eye-watering debt. This does not build resilience — it entrenches vulnerability.
The Global Goal on Adaptation will become a white elephant if it is not paired with predictable, grant-based finance. Indicators that pretend adaptation is happening without resourcing it will fail the people they claim to protect. COP30 is the moment to close the distance between science and solidarity: wealthy nations must scale up adaptation finance, share technologies, and support long-term resilience planning.
Until then, the world’s most vulnerable will continue carrying the heaviest burden with the lightest support — a defining injustice of our time.
The post Global Goal on Adaptation: Weighing the cow won’t make it fatter appeared first on Climate Home News.
Global Goal on Adaptation: Weighing the cow won’t make it fatter
Last Monday, to get the COP30 agenda agreed, Brazil promised to hold consultations on four controversial issues: emissions-cutting, transparency, trade and finance. Last night, after most delegates had spent their day off exploring the Amazon, the Presidency released a five-page document summarising what was said in those consultations.
Nothing in that “summary note” has been agreed by countries. But it collects together divergent views and forms the basis of what could become a politically agreed statement (known in the jargon as a cover decision) at the end of the COP. It has three key strands on boosting climate finance, strengthening emissions reductions and tackling trade measures linked to decarbonisation.
It includes the key rhetorical messages the COP30 presidency wants to include – that this is a “COP of Truth”, multilateralism is alive (despite President Trump’s efforts to thwart climate action) and the Paris Agreement is now moving from negotiation to implementation.
On emissions-cutting and the need to raise ambition – sorely lacking after the latest round of national climate plans (NDCs) – the note includes an option to hold an annual review and explore the “opportunities, barriers and enablers” to achieve the global efforts agreed at COP28 in Dubai to triple renewable energy and double energy efficiency by 2030; accelerate action to transition away from fossil fuels; and halt and reverse deforestation. This is essentially where any reference to a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels could be anchored.
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COP30 Bulletin Day 5: COP30 could greenlight work on a fossil fuel transition roadmap
At the climate talks in Belém, governments are considering whether to launch a process to craft a roadmap and how that might look -
COP30 Bulletin Day 6: First week ends with a colourful march and much work left to do
UN climate chief Simon Stiell tells governments “to give a little to get a lot”, as many thorny issues remain for ministers to resolve next week
The document also includes proposals to “urge” developed nations to include finance in their NDC climate plans and “encourage” all countries that have set a range of percentage emissions reductions in their NDCs – like the EU’s 66.25-72.5% – to move toward the upper end of the range.
On finance, options include a three-year work programme on provision of finance by wealthy governments and a goal to triple adaptation finance (something the least-developed countries are pushing for) or just repeating the finance goal agreed at COP29 and “noting” a new roadmap to achieve that (which rich nations very much prefer).
There are also various options for how to talk about where climate and trade overlap: an annual dialogue, roundtables, consultations, a new platform or just to keep discussing in the ‘response measures’ strand of climate talks.
Li Shuo, head of the Asia Society Policy Institute’s China Climate Hub, told Climate Home News it was highly significant that – after two years of the issue being buried in climate talks – trade has now been “anchored in the endgame of this COP”.
The various potential outcomes in the summary note could be included in existing agenda items or they could be lumped together into what is usually referred to as a cover text but the Brazilian government would likely prefer to call a “mutirão decision” or a delivery, response or global action plan.
Essentially, after governments ignored the presidency’s pleas not to add contentious items to the agenda, it looks like they could get at least some of what they want by turning those issues into the headline deal from COP30 .
At the start of the high-level segment of the conference on Monday morning, where environment ministers deliver their speeches, UN climate chief Simon Stiell urged governments “to get to the hardest issues fast”.
“When these issues get pushed deep into extra time, everybody loses. We absolutely cannot afford to waste time on tactical delays or stone-walling,” he added.
The presidency consultations on the issues in the note will continue on Monday, along with negotiations on adaptation metrics and a Just Transition Work Programme among others. The COP30 president then plans to convene a “Mutirao” meeting of ministers and heads of delegation on Tuesday “to bring together various outcomes”.
Korea joins coal phase-out coalition at COP30
As fossil fuels have grabbed headlines at COP30, major coal producer South Korea kicked off the second week of the Belém conference with an actual concrete pledge: the country will phase out most of its coal power by 2040.
Operating the seventh-largest coal fleet in the world, Korea announced on Monday that it will join the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA), an initiative launched in 2017 by the UK and Canada to encourage countries to wean themselves off the planet’s largest source of emissions. Oil and gas exporter Bahrain is another new member.
Asian industrial giant Korea said that out of 62 operating coal power plants, it will commit to retiring 40 of them by 2040. The phase-out date of the remaining 22 plants “will be determined based on economic and environmental feasibility”.
Korean Minister of Environment Kim Sung-Hwan said at an event announcing the pledge that the country will play a “leading role” in the energy transition.
“South Korea is known as a manufacturing powerhouse. Unfortunately renewable energy has taken a low share in our power mix, but going forward we are determined to foster renewable energy industries,” he told journalists. “We will show the world that we can create a decarbonised energy transition.”
Asked about a fossil fuel transition roadmap – an idea floated around by many governments in Belém – Sung-Hwan said “humanity and all of the governments should work together to achieve a decarbonised green transition”, adding that “COP30 will be an important momentum”.
UK climate minister Katie White said Korea was taking an “ambitious step”, and that they can “reap the rewards that we are seeing from our own clean energy transition”.
Korea is a major importer of oil and gas. Domestically, it has historically relied on coal for electricity, but the country’s production of the fossil fuel has decreased steadily by 86% in the last 25 years, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Their nuclear fleet, on the other hand, has nearly doubled in the same time period.
The post COP30 Bulletin Day 7: Brazil outlines options for a possible deal in Belém appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP30 Bulletin Day 7: Brazil sets out options to reach a deal in Belém
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