UK chancellor Jeremy Hunt has delivered his autumn statement, laying out plans for revitalising the economy at a time of inflation and slow growth.
As the US and the EU pour investment into low-carbon technologies and sectors in order to boost their economies, there had been hopes that the UK could take a similar approach.
Hunt promised tax cuts and “110 measures to help grow the British economy”. However, measures that directly helped to reduce emissions were relatively thin on the ground.
Significant announcements included £960m for a “green industries growth accelerator” to expand domestic low-carbon supply chains and measures to fast-track the connection of new power projects to the grid.
But experts argued that the UK would need more ambitious policies to match other nations in expanding low-carbon infrastructure.
Meanwhile, measures such as support for home insulation, which could also help cut people’s energy bills, were barely mentioned in the new statement.
- Scene setting
- Grid
- Green industries growth
- Energy efficiency and heating homes
- Levies
- Best of the rest
Scene setting
Amid on-going economic challenges, the UK has faced pressure to come up with a climate-related investment plan comparable to the US Inflation Reduction Act or the EU’s Green Deal Industrial Plan.
These strategies involve financially supporting key sectors, such as renewable energy and home insulation, in order to strengthen national competitiveness, while also boosting energy security and cutting bills.
However, while the UK’s opposition Labour party has embraced such a strategy with its proposed “green prosperity plan”, Jeremy Hunt has explicitly distanced himself from it. He wrote in the Times in March that the government would not try to compete with the US and EU on green subsidies:
“Our approach will be different – and better. We are not going toe-to-toe with our friends and allies in some distortive global subsidy race…With the threat of protectionism creeping its way back into the world economy, the long-term solution is not subsidy but security.”
The autumn statement document emphasises that “the UK will not be looking to match countries such as the US pound for pound on the back of policies like the Inflation Reduction Act”.
Instead, it focuses on incentivising private investment and what Hunt has called a “pro-growth regulatory regime”. (See: Green industries growth.)
The statement comes as the UK government withdraws from some of its net-zero policies. In a speech in September, prime minister Rishi Sunak emphasised the burden net-zero placed on British people and announced a rollback of plans to phase out fossil fuel-powered cars and boilers.
As the chart below shows, Hunt used climate-related keywords less in his latest speech than in his first autumn statement in 2022, or in the spring statement earlier this year. He did not specifically mention “climate” at all.
Observers also noted that there was little in the autumn statement to help people struggling to pay their energy bills.
Energy bills have doubled in three years – partly due to spiralling fossil-fuel prices amid the war in Ukraine. They are expected to rise even higher in January, with a new price cap announcement coming out the day after the autumn statement.
The government previously brought in an energy price guarantee to limit how much people would spend on their energy bills, but this expired in June.
Grid
The autumn statement included a promise to “speed up access to the national grid” through a number of measures.
Grid constraints on the island of Britain (Northern Ireland’s grid is separate) are increasingly seen as one of the biggest challenges for decarbonising the nation’s energy sector. Many renewable energy projects face a 10- to 15-year delay in gaining a grid connection.
Britain’s electricity network is aiming to be run entirely on low-carbon energy from 2035, but this could be threatened if renewable generation projects cannot connect to the grid quickly enough.
Beyond connecting renewable energy and other low-carbon energy technologies, challenges with grid connections are also holding back the expansion of industry.
Last week, the Guardian reported that the UK energy secretary Claire Coutinho could be granted powers to fast-track connecting projects to the grid, such as Tata’s planned electric battery gigafactory in Somerset.
Plans are being discussed by the government and the regulator Ofgem that would allow Coutinho to request that energy network companies accelerate upgrades to substations and power lines to connect specific developments, the article noted.
Earlier in November, Ofgem announced that it is introducing rules to remove “zombie” energy projects from the grid connection queue.
This represents a significant change from the existing “first-come, first-served” system, which has led to a queue of energy projects that could generate almost 400GW of electricity, well in excess of what is needed to power the entire energy system in Britain.
The autumn statement announced a reform to the grid connection process to cut waiting times, including “freeing up over 100GW of capacity so that projects can connect sooner”.
The change will enable the “significant majority” of projects to get their requested connection date with no wait, as well as reduce the overall connection delays from five years to no more than six months.
Additionally, the government announced an action plan, in response to the review by the electricity network commissioner, Nick Winser, within the statement. The review set out 18 recommendations designed to speed up the delivery of strategic transmission networks.
The action plan will halve the time it takes to build new grid infrastructure to seven years, the statement suggests.
The core elements of this are:
- Proposals for community benefits with up to £10,000 off electricity bills.
- Consulting on reforms to energy consenting rules in Scotland next year.
- “Committing to commission” the ESO to work with government to introduce a “strategic spatial energy plan”.
- Introducing competition into onshore electricity networks in 2024.
These actions will help to lower electricity prices, delivering an estimated net saving of £15-25 on average per household per year out to 2035, the statement notes.
Analysis published by the department for energy security and net-zero (DESNZ), reviewed by the Energy Systems Catapult and referenced within the statement, estimates that, once embedded, the grid reforms could increase investment temporarily by an average of £10bn per year over the next 10 years. This would speed up the transition to net-zero, it notes.
The autumn statement did not include a battery strategy, only noting that the government will “shortly set out more on its actions to support investment and growth in the manufacturing sector with the publication of the advanced manufacturing plan and UK battery strategy”.
Green industries growth
Jeremy Hunt reiterated the £4.5bn for strategic manufacturing sectors, including £960m earmarked for a “green industries growth accelerator”, which the Treasury announced on 17 November.
The investment is designed to support the expansion of “strong, home-grown, clean energy supply chains”, including carbon capture, utilisation and storage, electricity networks, hydrogen, nuclear and offshore wind.
This will “enable the UK to seize growth opportunities through the transition to net-zero, building on our world-leading decarbonisation track record and strong deployment offer,” the government’s statement notes.
The investment was welcomed by the renewable industry, with trade association RenewableUK’s chief executive Dan McGrail saying in a statement:
“The chancellor has been clear that the green industries growth accelerator is for strategic industries, targeted to unlock maximum private investment where the UK can be competitive – and there couldn’t be a better fit for that than offshore wind and renewables. With the right support, the likes of which we’ve seen from government today, industry estimates that the offshore wind supply chain alone could boost the UK’s economy by £92bn by 2040.”
The fund will sit alongside the range of long-term deployment support set out in Powering Up Britain, published in March, which will “ensure the government delivers the clean energy transition and boosts green investment and job creation across the country”, the statement notes.
Within the autumn statement, the next set of investment zones are named, including the East Midlands, which will have a focus on green industries and advanced manufacturing. This is expected to help leverage £383m in private investment and create 4,200 jobs in the region over the next 10 years, it says.
Beyond this, the autumn statement announces permanent full expensing, including the 50% first-year allowance for special rate assets. This applies across the economy, with the statement highlighting the impact on capital-intensive, low-carbon industries, such as solar and offshore wind.
Additionally, permanent full expensing can support companies looking to decarbonise by investing in solar panels and heat pumps, as well as “greener” machinery, the statement notes.
Reacting to this, Rachel Solomon Williams, executive director at the Aldersgate Group, said:
“We welcome the announcement that capital full expensing will be made permanent, as it can drive business investment in decarbonisation – but it is not enough on its own. This urgent need for action is demonstrated in clean energy investment, where the UK has fallen from fourth to seventh in attractiveness to investors, in part due to global competition from the US and the EU, but also a lack of consistent policy support from the government.
“A comprehensive response to the US Inflation Reduction Act remains critical, as part of a clear industrial strategy which provides the UK economy with a clear direction that businesses can rely on.”
The autumn statement also mentions the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (IETF), which provides funding to support industrial sites to invest in more energy efficiency and low-carbon technologies.
IETF was initially announced in the 2018 budget, with £315m of funding made available up until 2027 at the time. The fund is now into its third phase, with the £185m – mentioned in the autumn statement – announced in March 2023.
This funding will come from the £6bn announced in the autumn statement in 2022, to support energy efficiency from 2025. Further allocations are set to come out “in due course”, the 2023 statement notes.
Under the six-year Climate Change Agreement scheme, set to start in 2025, the government is providing around £300m a year in tax relief in exchange for meeting energy efficiency targets. Additionally, it is expanding VAT relief available on the installation of energy-saving materials in residential buildings or those used solely for a relevant charitable purpose.
In addition to the focus on offshore wind as a strategic sector, the autumn budget outlines plans to bring forward legislation to provide the Crown Estate with borrowing and wider investment power “as soon as parliamentary time allows”.
This will help to unlock a further 20-30GW of offshore wind seabed rights by 2030, the statement notes.
The government is also working with the Crown Estate to bring forward additional floating wind in the Celtic Sea through the 2030s, which has the potential to see 12GW of generation deployed.
This would be alongside the 4.5GW auction round due to open soon, which has the potential to deliver £20bn in direct employment, the statement says.
Energy efficiency and heating homes
There have been persistent calls for the government to scale up support to help people insulate their homes.
The UK has some of the least efficient housing in Europe. Improving this situation would cut emissions, reduce reliance on fossil-fuel imports and save billions on people’s energy bills.
In last year’s autumn statement, Hunt pledged £6bn of new government funding between 2025 and 2028 to improve energy efficiency in households, businesses and the public sector. He also announced the formation of a new energy efficiency taskforce to help deliver “energy efficiency across the economy”.
Since then, there has been little information about the new funding and the taskforce was scrapped in September, amid the government’s rollback of net-zero policies.
Sunak also withdrew a policy that would have required landlords to improve the efficiency rating of their rental properties by 2028. This continued a long trend of Conservative governments announcing home-insulation schemes and then scrapping them.
Ahead of this year’s autumn statement, various MPs, housebuilders, charities and climate experts said Hunt should prioritise retrofitting people’s homes. Among the measures proposed were widening access to insulation schemes and more long-term clarity on how existing funds would be spent.
The Daily Telegraph reported on a plan to give new homeowners some of their stamp duty money back if they insulated their houses within two years of moving in. According to the newspaper, this idea was “in the running” for Hunt’s statement.
Expert groups and thinktanks also recommended new financial incentives to encourage landlords to insulate their homes.
In the event, there was very little in the statement on home energy efficiency. The only mention of the £6bn fund was a chunk that would be allocated for industrial sites. (See: Green industries growth.) Juliet Phillips, a senior policy adviser at the thinktank E3G, tells Carbon Brief:
“Our analysis suggests that £6bn would barely cover the costs of domestic retrofit, let alone industrial energy efficiency as well. The mammoth task of improving the UK’s leaky homes can’t be underfunded; and we’d encourage additional funding to be put aside to support industry.”
There was more on decarbonising heating, following on from Sunak’s recent announcement that he would increase grants under the boiler upgrade scheme from £5,000 to £7,500, in order to incentivise the switch from fossil-fuel boilers to electric heat pumps.
The government says it will launch a consultation into changing planning regulations to “end the blanket restriction on heat pumps one metre from a property boundary in England”. It adds that this will “reduce delays”.
It also commits to expanding the VAT relief available on the installation of energy-saving materials to additional technologies, including water-source heat pumps.
Levies
The autumn statement confirmed the energy profits levy will end no later than 31 March 2028. This was brought in in 2022 in response to the enormous profits made by oil-and-gas majors due to the elevated global price of fossil fuels.
It was initially set at 25%, before being raised to 35% by Hunt during the autumn statement in 2022.
Within the autumn statement, an investment exemption for the electricity generator levy has now been introduced.
The windfall tax was introduced during the spring budget 2023, applying a 45% levy on electricity generators who have made excess profits amid high power prices.
Since its introduction, the energy sector has been calling for the introduction of investment allowances, which allows generators to re-invest tax expenditures into low-carbon technologies.
An investment allowance was always included in the energy profits levy, a move that trade body Energy UK said sent the “wrong signal to investors”, as oil-and-gas extraction would face “a lower rate of effective tax than low-carbon generators”.
New electricity generation stations or expansions of existing generation assets made on or after 22 November 2023, will now not be subject to the levy. The electricity generator levy is also set to end on 31 March 2028.
The government is going to freeze main and reduced rates of climate change levy in the UK in 2025-26, the autumn statement notes.
As such, the levy for electricity and gas will be frozen at £0.00775/kWh, liquid petroleum gas (LPG) at £0.02175/kWh and any other taxable commodity at £0.06064/kWh.
Reduced rates will be frozen at 92% for electricity, 77% for LPG and 89% for gas and any other taxable commodity, it notes.
Alongside the autumn statement, the government has published the conclusion to the review of the oil and gas fiscal regime, as well as set out the final design of the energy security investment mechanism. This includes future adjustments to the mechanism’s price thresholds in response to inflation.
This package will “provide certainty and predictability for investors and operators in this crucial industry in the short-, medium- and long-term”, the statement notes.
Best of the rest
Beyond these key energy and climate announcements, the autumn statement also saw reforms to the emissions trading scheme (ETS).
These were set out in July 2023 and will reduce the number of ETS permits available for purchase from the government by 45% between 2023 and 2027, the statement notes.
Additionally, the scheme will be extended to cover emissions from domestic maritime and energy from waste in 2026 and 2028, respectively, marking an “important step in achieving net-zero ambitions”.
The autumn statement also announced that the government will look to remove unnecessary planning constraints by accelerating the expansion of the electric vehicles (EV) charging infrastructure.
This builds on actions laid out already in the government’s EV infrastructure strategy, which set out the government’s EV vision for 2030.
The government will consult on amending the national planning policy framework to prioritise the rollout of EV charge points, including EV charging hubs, the statement says.
As of the end of October 2023, there were 51,516 EV public charging points across the UK at 30,360 charging locations, according to charging services provider Zapmap. This was a 45% increase in the number of charging devices since October 2022.
With sales of EVs continuing to surge in the UK, charging infrastructure will need to keep pace, to facilitate the transition from petrol and diesel vehicles.
Despite pressure from the Treasury to raise fuel duty, the autumn statement left it frozen at 57.95p, the same level it has been at since 2011. Fuel duty was only mentioned once in the autumn statement, in reference to the drop in inflation.
The post Autumn statement 2023: Key climate and energy announcements appeared first on Carbon Brief.
New Zealand’s parliament has adopted a controversial new law blocking a whole avenue of climate litigation and shutting down its most advanced corporate lawsuit, which has been blamed by the government for shaking business confidence and investment.
The Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Bill, expected to take effect in the coming days after it is formally signed by the Governor-General, prevents all current and future civil claims for climate loss or harm under tort law.
Justice minister Paul Goldsmith said last week that the aim was to give businesses “certainty around their climate change obligations”, noting it would not alter the government’s responsibilities under the Climate Change Response Act 2002 nor business obligations under the Emissions Trading Scheme.
“Our response to climate change is best managed by the Government at a national level and not through piece-meal litigation in the courts,” he added in a statement.
Such litigation, he said, “risks developing a new regime that contradicts the framework Parliament has already enacted” to tackle climate change.
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Experts say that despite dismissing the lawsuit, the ruling sets a precedent by confirming that climate science can establish legal liability for the damage caused by emissions
Goldsmith singled out a key domestic climate lawsuit brought by Northland iwi leader and activist Mike Smith against six big companies: dairy firms Fonterra and Dairy Holdings, energy firms Genesis Energy and Z Energy, New Zealand Steel and coal mining firm BT Mining. A seventh original defendant, Channel Infrastructure, was dropped after it permanently decommissioned its Marsden Point oil refinery.
Smith argued that these companies had caused him harm under public nuisance and negligence law, as well as a third breach of a duty to cease contributing to climate change that has yet to be tested domestically. He did not seek financial compensation, instead asking for the companies to immediately stop emitting or contributing to net greenhouse gas emissions.
In one of the most advanced corporate climate accountability lawsuits in the world, a trial had been scheduled for April 2027 after the Supreme Court unanimously allowed the case to continue.
Corporate lobbying in the shadows
Smith described the passing of the bill as “deeply concerning”, particularly as it coincided with the Supreme Court hearing another of his climate lawsuits. In that case, Smith v Attorney-General, he argues that the government’s response to climate change and its impacts on Māori communities in particular breaches rights to life and culture.
“That timing raises profound questions about the separation of powers and the rule of law,” said Smith. “Whatever one’s view of the merits of these cases, it is deeply troubling when parliament intervenes to remove a legal pathway while the courts are actively considering fundamental questions about climate responsibility, rights and the crown’s obligations.”
The bill – which says that no person (including the government) can be found liable in tort for emissions-related climate change effects – followed major lobbying efforts by the companies defending themselves in Smith’s lawsuit. They outlined a proposed legal amendment in a briefing note to the government in 2024.
The centre-right government has been fiercely criticised over its lack of transparency in relation to this lobbying activity. The national ombudsman recently found that the Prime Minister’s Office effectively withheld information requested by the Environmental Law Initiative about meetings, discussions and conversations regarding Smith’s case.
Green groups fail to stop bill
The bill sparked huge concern among environmental campaigners in New Zealand and elsewhere. Greenpeace Aotearoa called it a “shocking abuse of executive power” and the vast majority of submissions to a parliamentary inquiry said it should be rejected.
But in the end, it was adopted with little resistance, moving relatively smoothly through parliament, passing its third reading by 67 votes to 53. Sam Bookman, climate law lecturer at Melbourne Law School, told Climate Home News he was not surprised by this, given that the coalition government has a secure majority.
A complaint has been made to the UN special rapporteur on climate change and human rights by Smith, the National Iwi Chairs Forum Pou Tikanga and youth coalition Climate Clinic Aotearoa over what they see as the government’s heavy-handed approach. Smith is also challenging the new law in yet another lawsuit.
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Bookman thinks it “very unlikely” that such a challenge will succeed, noting that New Zealand’s constitution is firmly anchored in parliamentary sovereignty.
But the expert in climate law does not see the bill as the end of legal action in the country, noting that New Zealand has a “sophisticated climate litigation landscape with a growing number of specialist and experienced lawyers and NGOs”.
The country is also approaching its next general election in November, and some opposition parties have pledged to restore access to the courts if elected.
Amanda Larsson, global project lead on agriculture for Greenpeace International, said: “This law deserves to be tested, and I strongly encourage the international climate litigation community to unite and help defend New Zealanders’ fundamental right to hold polluters accountable before this becomes a global blueprint.”
Copycat legislation on the rise
New Zealand’s move is part of a small but growing legislative effort to shut down climate litigation around the world.
In the US, Republican politicians introduced legislation in the House and Senate in April that would shield fossil fuel firms from climate liability lawsuits. Similar laws have already been passed at state level in Tennessee, Utah, Iowa and Louisiana.
The German state of Bavaria has put forward a similar proposal to the Federal Council, aiming to block private climate claims as well as the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments imposing such liability. There are also proposals to limit available remedies and actions in the Netherlands and Belgium.
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Bookman said he expects more efforts to counter climate damages litigation and advised plaintiffs to think about how to respond, including drawing on broader support in opposing them.
“Even though it’s very hard for plaintiffs to win these types of cases, companies are very eager to avoid the expense, embarrassment and political accountability that come even with unsuccessful lawsuits,” he said.
The post New Zealand moves to protect business with law curtailing climate litigation appeared first on Climate Home News.
New Zealand moves to protect business with law curtailing climate litigation
Bhima Yudhistira Adhinegara is the Executive Director of the Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS), an Indonesia-based economic think tank. Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat is the Director of the China-Indonesia desk at CELIOS.
Indonesia produces around 60% of the world’s nickel, a metal used to manufacture batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) – more than any other country in the world. But in 2026, the government sharply reduced how much of its nickel can be extracted from the ground.
Production quotas were reduced by around 40% this year compared to 2025. Weda Bay, the largest nickel mine on Earth, had its allowance cut by more than 70% and exhausted its full-year quota by the end of May, halting mining entirely; it cannot resume large-scale extraction until next year unless regulators grant an extension.
The policy has sparked a vivid debate in Indonesian policy circles: how can the country shift its strategy from a decade of mining vast quantities of cheap nickel to producing a high-value and low-carbon material that the rest of the world wants for EV batteries.
The cuts aren’t a silver bullet to clean up Indonesia’s nickel industry, whose smelters are powered by coal – the most polluting fossil fuels. But alongside stricter enforcement of environmental rules, it is one side of efforts to produce more sustainable nickel for a premium.
Restricting Indonesia’s nickel output
Production quotas were introduced to stop the collapse of nickel prices because of oversupply in the market. Prices had fallen more than 40% in 2023 alone and kept sliding as Indonesian supply kept growing, hitting a four-year low of around $13,900 a ton in late 2025.
Critics called the recent tightening of production quotas proof that Indonesia’s nickel strategy has failed, arguing that the industry shouldn’t need to throttle its own output to survive. But when assessed against what the policy was supposed to do – push up nickel prices – it has worked. Prices jumped to $20,000 a ton in May, the highest since 2024.
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Chinese industry groups representing companies that have invested billions to mine and refine the country’s nickel were furious, warning Indonesia’s president Prabowo Subianto that the cuts put $50 billion worth of investment at risk. But much of that Chinese capital is sunk into smelters and processing plants built specifically to run on Indonesian ore, and cannot simply be moved elsewhere. That gives Jakarta more room to hold its ground than the warning suggests.
Stronger environmental enforcement
Since the start of the year, Indonesia’s forestry task force has seized more than four million hectares of land from mines and plantations operating illegally in protected forests, collecting over two trillion rupiah ($113 million) in fines.
This included 148 hectares seized from Weda Bay for lacking a forestry permit. The share of nickel produced from illegal small-scale mining also fell from about a quarter in 2022 to roughly 10% by 2024.
The crackdown responds to serious environmental damages in the nickel industry. On Obi Island, a waste pond collapsed after heavy rain in June 2025, flooding three villages and killing a resident. Internal company tests found chromium-6 – a carcinogen – in the water, in quantities far above the legal limit. The footprint of another mine near Raja Ampat, which is home to some of the world’s richest coral reefs, grew 60-fold in just eight years.
The market is responding to early cleanup efforts. Low-carbon nickel now sells for a real premium, roughly $18,800 to $19,300 a ton compared with $17,900 to $18,300 otherwise, as carmakers seek to source cleaner materials to comply with the European Union’s new emissions rules for imports.
In turn, this is incentivising the industry to do more to green its operations. Vale Indonesia’s smelter in South Sulawesi now runs almost entirely on hydropower, for example.
None of this addresses coal use, however. Major Indonesian nickel producers still emitted an estimated 15 million metric tons of greenhouse gases in 2023. Indonesia may be cracking down on illegal mining and rewarding cleaner producers but it is still running its mines on the dirtiest fuel available.
Unequal benefits
For Indonesia to truly benefit from producing cleaner and high-value nickel, it needs to reap the economic benefits too. Although the industry has boosted the country’s economic growth, the reality on the ground tells a different story.
Konawe in Southeast Sulawesi is home to a major smelting complex. Growth in the district jumped from 6% to 22% between 2015 and 2023, driven almost entirely by the nickel industry, according to a study by the Lowy Institute study. At the same time, poverty levels increased slightly and unemployment remained unchanged.
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In Halmahera, another epicentre of the nickel industry, spending by the poorest fifth grew just 5% between 2019 and 2022, compared with 28% for the wealthiest fifth, according to a separate study.
Part of the reason for this inequality is the system for transferring mining royalties to district authorities where the mines are located. In theory, they are entitled to the largest share. But in practice, payments are delayed, companies routinely dispute what they owe and royalties are pooled and distributed across a larger area.
The Natural Resource Governance Institute has found that decentralisation handed local governments power to approve new mines faster than they could build their capacity to manage them. Higher output raises national income on paper, but local governments remain constrained by fiscal rules and infrastructure costs that scale with mining.
None of this makes the 2026 quota cuts a mistake. Indonesia has every right to defend its pricing power over a resource it controls. But limiting extraction isn’t going to fix underlying issues around environmental enforcement and revenue-sharing. That requires rules that are consistently enforced, royalties that reach communities living by the mines, and a plan to wean smelters off coal.
The post Indonesia’s nickel production cuts are not enough to create a sustainable industry appeared first on Climate Home News.
Indonesia’s nickel production cuts are not enough to create a sustainable industry
Climate Change
Risk of “catastrophic” oil spill reaching Kimberley coast found in Woodside’s Scott Reef gas drilling plans
SYDNEY, Monday 24 August 2026 – New analysis of Woodside modelling released by Greenpeace Australia Pacific and Environs Kimberley has revealed the oil and gas corporation’s plans to drill at Scott Reef could cause an oil spill up to 30 times bigger than the 2009 Montara disaster, impacting the Kimberley coastline and reaching as far as Indonesia.
The new analysis details the “catastrophic” oil spill risk put to environmental regulators for approval by Woodside in its Browse to North West Shelf Project (Browse) plans, the worst-case scenario being a blowout directly below Scott Reef, polluting whale migratory pathways and covering isolated turtle nesting ground with oil condensate.
An FOI application (F348) revealed the federal environment department (DCCEEW) asked offshore oil and gas regulator NOPSEMA to look into the oil spill risk in 2025. NOPSEMA’s response to the application refused access to its report, and one document shows DCCEEW sought further advice this year.
Greenpeace and Environs Kimberley are calling on the Federal Government to publicly release the NOPSEMA report given the risk of an uncontrolled release of oil condensate from directly below Scott Reef.
Hannah Schuch, Senior Campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “Woodside is aware that drilling at Scott Reef risks a massive oil spill that would have severe, far-reaching consequences. It appears environmental regulators are aware too.
“The state and federal governments need to take this risk from Woodside’s drilling plans seriously, as they could end up allowing the worst oil spill in Australian history.
“The pygmy blue whales that migrate up and down the WA coast with their newborns each year could be swimming and feeding in toxic, oil-slicked water. Woodside’s proposal to drill at Scott Reef is an environmental disaster waiting to happen, and the WA and federal governments have one surefire way to prevent catastrophe — reject Browse.”
Martin Prichard, Executive Director at Environs Kimberley, said: “A catastrophic oil spill by Woodside would be disastrous not just for marine life in the area but also for the Kimberley’s $500 million tourism industry.
“The state and federal governments will see five marine parks on the Kimberley coast included in the risk area of a catastrophic Woodside oil spill.
“The Montara oil spill was disastrous for West Timor with the toxic oil destroying seaweed farmers’ livelihoods. The Kimberley dodged a bullet with Montara, we were lucky the spill didn’t head our way. Myself and a crew flew over the Montara oil spill and followed it as far as we could. It was like a scene from a disaster movie.”
After the WA Environmental Protection Authority deemed Browse “unacceptable” due, in part, to oil spill risk, Woodside submitted a mitigation plan based on technology that has never been used “in anger”, a weakness stated in an independent expert review of the plan.
Professor Richard Steiner, independent oil spill expert, said: “A large offshore spill is impossible to effectively contain or recover. Historically, only 2-6% of total spill volume is recovered and the ecological injury from the release of toxic hydrocarbons in the sea can be severe, extensive, and long-term.
“Here in Alaska, government research concludes that several marine populations injured by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, including whales, fish, and seabirds, are still not recovering today, 37 years later. We should expect similar long-term ecological impacts in Western Australia if there were to be a major oil spill. The only sure way to avoid the risk of a catastrophic marine oil spill is to not develop oil and gas projects in marine environments.”
-ENDS-
Media contact
Emma Sangalli on emma.sangalli@greenpeace.org or 0431 513 465
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