Australia pushes for Unabated Fossil Fuel Phaseout at COP28, while Australia opens offshore CCS opportunities to expand Fossil gas

Santos Bayu-Undan carbon capture
and storage project 

Australia's Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has been forward in supporting Fossil Fuel Phaseout or phasedown at COP28. But his statements almost always come with a qualifying words: unabated, or abatement. 

On 12th December Bowen said "“Some of the world’s largest economies have now called for a phase out of unabated fossil fuels,” 

On 11th December press conference Bowen said "Where we've come from is of course, we came to this COP with the G7 having agreed to a phase out of unabated fossil fuels in energy systems by 2050, a position that the Umbrella group decided to support which I chair obviously, at the beginning of the negotiations, contrary to an erroneous report I read suggesting the Umbrella group does not support that position, let me make it very clear - the Umbrella group supports the phase out of fossil fuels of energy systems by 2050, that's very important - that group of United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Israel, Ukraine, Tajikistan, Japan, Iceland, and Norway.

Bowen was a little more forthright in the Majlis discussion, saying "We don’t need to phase out fossil fuel emissions, we need to end the use of fossil fuels in our energy systems, with abatement as a backstop and goalkeeper, not as an excuse for delay or inaction,”

It is never explained what abated fossil fuels actually means, but this is likely to entail either carbon offsets or carbon capture and storage, both of which are problematic in different ways and come with large integrity issues.