Activists broaden legal case against Santos for greenwashing

However, according to ACCR’s filing, Santos internal documents said hydrogen could only be produced at that price if the gas used cost about $4 a kilogram, and Santos did not “have a line of sight” to such a cheap supply, and the product would not be zero emissions.

The filing said Santos also assumed it could sell blue hydrogen and claim offsets for reducing its customer’s emissions. This would likely be double counting of emissions savings.

Other Santos documents described some claimed emission reductions as “speculative”, “nominal” and “notional”. The ACCR filing quoted a document that described the significant contribution of “CCS expansion” to emissions reduction in the Santos plan as “a nominal number making up the difference” to achieve net-zero emissions.

Santos assumed it could fill natural gas pipelines with up to 50 per cent hydrogen when it had no reasonable basis for assuming more than 10 per cent, according to the filing.

Santos declined to respond to questions.

No court date has been set but a hearing in the first half of 2023 is expected.

O’Brien said companies had to be scrupulously accurate in the claims they made to the market.

“When the law does catch up, there may be a wave of enforcement action that occurs, and you don’t want to be on the wrong side of it,” she said.

The law appears to be ready to move. On Tuesday, Australian Securities and Investments Commission chair Joseph Longo said, internationally, regulators were sharpening their focus on climate change.

“If you make net-zero claims, you must have substance behind those claims,” he said. “Aspiration on its own is not enough – the bar is set much higher.”

Longo told The Australian Financial Review that ASIC was already investigating one publicly listed company for greenwashing.

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