WA regulator draws fire as it sticks to its guns on Woodside gas plant

But Bill Hare, chief executive of consultancy Climate Analytics, said the requirement imposed on Woodside was an “extremely performative review … when it’s too late to do anything”.

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“Any entity that thinks you can go ahead with emitting fossil fuel emissions for the next nearly 50 years is clearly in denial about what needs to be done,” he said.

Hare added that while the EPA allowed emitters to use offsets to achieve emissions reductions, the mechanisms were not permanent enough to negate the effect of long-lasting carbon dioxide emissions.

In 2019, the Coalition government agreed it would use the EPA’s assessment as the basis for federal approval of the project.

Greenpeace clean energy head Jess Panegyres said much had changed since then – including the Black Summer bushfires and a federal legislative requirement to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 – and federal environment minister Tanya Plibersek should initiate her own inquiry.

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“It demonstrates that our federal environment laws are broken, that this critical climate decision that has a 50-year longevity could be left to a small state EPA with a really narrow mandate,” she said.

A Woodside spokeswoman said the company complies with regulatory requirements in seeking and receiving approvals for its projects and awaited the guidance of the state’s Appeals Convenor, which is considering the objections lodged against the EPA’s position.

After climate, the greatest concern about the NWS plant is the effect of its industrial pollution on the more than 1 million adjacent ancient rock-art engravings, which are nominated for World Heritage listing.

The EPA said that if the art is damaged, restoration is unlikely to be possible. However, the authority said the scientific literature on the issue was limited and contested.

University of Western Australia’s professor of rock art Benjamin Smith disputes both points and said the one paper disputing the link between pollution and rock-art damage was not published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

“There are no other recent scientific reports that suggest industrial emissions are not damaging the rock art,” he said.

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