Not all gases are the same

The first: LNG's carbon footrprint is horrible. The arrival of carbon pricing is exposing this. That's driving up LNG project costs. All quite rational.

The second: LNG has a finite, short-term economic lifespan. Building inefficient, short-term infrastructure IS expensive. Rising LNG plant prices merely reflect these dead-end economics.

LNG requires compressing feedstock natural gas 600 times so it can be shipped to in special, single-purpose tankers for decompression and pipeline delivery at the far end. All this is energy intensive. This creates greenhouse gases -- lots of them.

US researchers have totted up these emissions. They've concluded natural gas shipped to market as LNG for eventual combustion at customer-end gas plants creates 'life-cycle' greenhouse gases HIGHER than that of coal.

Therefore, LNG takes us backwards in battling climate change. LNG project prices are reflecting this. That's what prices do.

The next problem is technological.

In the transition to a clean energy future, efficient, flexible, adaptable, future-proof, long-term infrastructure is needed.

LNG is none of the above. Pipelines are all of the above.

Given that natural gas will give way to renewable energy (like solar and wind) as well as biofuels, hydrogen and even carbon and storage -- pipelines are much better suited to this energy future than LNG.

Pipelines can carry hydrogen, biofuels and waste carbon. That makes them flexible and adaptable. THAT has future value. It's this 'call' option value that's now being reflected in the attractive relative pricing of pipelines vs. LNG.

In other words, the estimated $160 billion of LNG infrastructure now either under construction or planned in Australia will be written off in just a few decades. Unrepurposable for other energy sources, it will leave behind industrial blight, unemployment and environmental degradation. That's what's pushing up LNG project prices in Australia. We need to heed those market signals.

The transition to a low-emission, clean energy future will take a long time. What's needed is long-term infrastructure of enduring economic utility.