For the first time, Australian researchers have linked a new fossil fuel project – Woodside's Scarborough gas project – to hundreds of deaths

Global warming from Woodside’s massive Scarborough gas project off Western Australia would lead to 484 additional heat-related deaths in Europe alone this century, and kill about 16 million additional corals on the Great Barrier Reef, new UNSW and ANU research has revealed. Their ground-breaking research was recently published in Nature magazine’s international Policy Journal.

The results close a fundamental gap between science and decision-making about fossil fuel projects. They also challenge claims by proponents that climate risks posed by a fossil fuel project are negligible or cannot be quantified.

Each new investment in coal and gas, such as the Scarborough project, can now be linked to harmful effects both today and in the future. It means decision-makers can properly assess the range of risks a project poses to humanity and the planet, before deciding if it should proceed.

Scientists know every tonne of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions makes global warming worse. But proponents of new fossil fuel projects in Australia routinely say their future greenhouse gas emissions are negligible compared to the scale of global emissions or say the effects of these emissions on global warming can’t be measured.

The Scarborough project is approved by government for development and is expected to produce gas from next year. Located off WA, it includes wells connected by a 430km pipeline to an onshore processing facility. The gas will be liquefied and burned for energy, both in Australia and overseas. Production is expected to last more than 30 years. When natural gas is burned, more than 99% of it converts to CO₂.

Woodside’s evaluation of the Scarborough gas project claimed, “It is not possible to link GHG emissions from Scarborough with climate change or any particular climate-related impacts given the estimated […] emissions associated with Scarborough are negligible in the context of existing and future predicted global GHG concentrations.”

But what if there was a way to measure the harms? That’s the question UNSW and ANU researchers set out to answer.

A method already exists to directly link global emissions to the climate warming they cause. It uses scientific understanding of Earth’s systems, direct observations and climate model simulations. According to the IPCC, every 1,000 billion tonnes of CO₂ emissions causes about 0.45°C of additional global warming. This arithmetic forms the basis for calculating how much more CO₂ humanity can emit to keep warming within the Paris Agreement goals.

But decisions about future emissions are not made at the global scale. Instead, Earth’s climate trajectory will be determined by the aggregation of decisions on many individual projects. That’s why the UNSW and ANU research extended the IPCC method to the level of individual projects – an approach that is illustrated using the Scarborough gas project.

Over its lifetime, Scarborough is expected to emit 876 million tonnes of CO₂. Researchers estimate these emissions will cause 0.00039°C of additional global warming. Estimates such as these are typically expressed as a range, alongside a measure of confidence in the projection. In this case, there is a 66–100% likelihood that Scarborough will cause additional global warming of between 0.00024°C and 0.00055°C.

This additional warming might seem small but it will cause tangible damage. The human cost of global warming can be quantified by considering how many people will be left outside the “human climate niche” – in other words, the climate conditions in which societies have historically thrived.

Researchers calculated that the additional warming from Scarborough will expose 516,000 people globally to a local climate that’s beyond the hot extreme of the human climate niche. Researchers drilled down into specific impacts in Europe, where suitable health data was available across 854 cities. Their best estimate is that this project would cause an additional 484 heat-related deaths in Europe by the end of this century.

And regarding harm to nature, using research into how accumulated exposure to heat affects coral reefs, they found about 16 million corals on the Great Barrier Reef would be lost in each new mass bleaching. The existential threat to the Great Barrier Reef from human-caused global warming is already being realised. Additional warming instigated by new fossil fuel projects will ratchet up pressure on this natural wonder.

These findings mean the best-available scientific evidence can now be used by communities, companies, governments and regulators when deciding if a fossil fuel project will proceed.

Crucially, it is no longer defensible for companies proposing new or extended fossil fuel projects to claim the climate harms will be negligible. The research shows the harms are, in fact, tangible and quantifiable – and no project is too small to matter.

To find out more and support this research work, visit the website of UNSW’s Climate Accountability Project.

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References & further reading:

• Abram, N. J., Maher, N., Perkins-Kirkpatrick, S., Falster, G. M., Hughes, T. P., Meissner, K. J., Slater, L. J., King, A. D., Pitman, A. J., Moon, G., & Morgan, W. (2025). Quantifying the regional to global climate impacts of individual fossil fuel projects to inform decision-making. Npj Climate Action, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44168-025-00296-5

• Sixth assessment report — IPCC. (n.d.). IPCC. https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-report/ar6/

• Woodside [Woodside]. (2020). Scarborough Offshore Project proposal. https://docs.nopsema.gov.au/A724553

• MacDougall, A. H. (2015). The Transient Response to Cumulative CO2 Emissions: a Review. Current Climate Change Reports, 2(1), 39–47. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40641-015-0030-6

• Climate Change 2022: Impacts, adaptation and Vulnerability. (n.d.). IPCC. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/

• Lenton, T. M., Xu, C., Abrams, J. F., Ghadiali, A., Loriani, S., Sakschewski, B., Zimm, C., Ebi, K. L., Dunn, R. R., Svenning, J., & Scheffer, M. (2023). Quantifying the human cost of global warming. Nature Sustainability, 6(10), 1237–1247. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01132-6

• Masselot, P., Mistry, M. N., Rao, S., Huber, V., Monteiro, A., Samoli, E., Stafoggia, M., De’Donato, F., Garcia-Leon, D., Ciscar, J., Feyen, L., Schneider, A., Katsouyanni, K., Vicedo-Cabrera, A. M., Aunan, K., & Gasparrini, A. (2025). Estimating future heat-related and cold-related mortality under climate change, demographic and adaptation scenarios in 854 European cities. Nature Medicine, 31(4), 1294–1302. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-024-03452-2

• Hughes, T. P., Kerry, J. T., Baird, A. H., Connolly, S. R., Dietzel, A., Eakin, C. M., Heron, S. F., Hoey, A. S., Hoogenboom, M. O., Liu, G., McWilliam, M. J., Pears, R. J., Pratchett, M. S., Skirving, W. J., Stella, J. S., & Torda, G. (2018). Global warming transforms coral reef assemblages. Nature, 556(7702), 492–496. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0041-2

• Henley, B., Hoegh-Guldberg, O., & McGregor, H. (2024). ‘Wake-up call to humanity’: research shows the Great Barrier Reef is the hottest it’s been in 400 years. The Conversation. https://doi.org/10.64628/aa.sccpx4c47

• Australian Climate Accountability Project. (n.d.). Australian Human Rights Institute. https://www.humanrights.unsw.edu.au/research/australian-climate-accountability-project

• For the first time, we linked a new fossil fuel project to hundreds of deaths. Here’s the impact of Woodside’s Scarborough gas project. (n.d.). UNSW Sites. https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2025/10/link-fossil-fuel-projects-hundreds-deaths