Counting the cost: tool estimates fossil fuel impacts
Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson |
Emissions from coal, oil and gas projects will be translated into extreme heat, rising seas, poverty, and coral loss on the Great Barrier Reef using a tool created by Australian researchers.
The Australian National University and UNSW announced the launch of the Carbon Impacts Tracer on Tuesday and revealed analysis for five major fossil fuel projects in Queensland, NSW and Western Australia.
Emissions from Queensland’s Carmichael coal mine alone would expose an additional 2.8 million people to unprecedented heat, according to the tool.
The launch will come one day before a decision is expected on the Hunter Valley Operations coal mine extension and less than a week before global leaders gather in Fiji and Tuvalu for pre-COP meetings.
The Carbon Impacts Tracer estimates the real-world impact of fossil fuel projects using a method developed by researchers from six universities in Australia and the UK and published in Climate Action in 2025.
It calculated that Woodside’s Scarborough Energy Project off the coast of Western Australia would expose an extra 516,000 people to unprecedented heat based on its lifetime emissions.
The open-access tool expands on that research to analyse the impact of other existing and proposed fossil fuel developments, Australian National University climate science professor Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick said.
“Many new fossil fuel projects describe their emissions as negligible in the context of global totals,” she said.
“This tool changes that.”
The tracer features estimates from Queensland’s Carmichael coal mine, the proposed Narrabri Gas Project in NSW, and three developments in Western Australia, including the Browse to North West Shelf Project and North West Shelf Extension.
It estimates the extension, approved in 2025, will expose 2.6 million people to unprecedented heat, raise sea levels by .057mm due to glacier loss, and endanger 80.4 million coral colonies during each Great Barrier Reef bleaching event based on its lifetime emissions.
Australian National University research officer Claudia Stepin, who built the tool, said additional measures were added to demonstrate the projects’ impact on populations.
“Expanding the tool to include impacts such as poverty, labour loss and food insecurity allows us to build a much more comprehensive picture of the consequences of fossil fuel emissions,” she said.
Users could also input customised scenarios into the online tool, Ms Stepin said, to calculate the impact of future projects.
“Every single potential project matters and now we can begin to quantify what those impacts could mean before a project is built,” she said.
“This opens up the possibilities for accountability, advocacy and decision-making.”
AAP