Tasmania needs to do more if it wants

We cannot be complacent and must reduce emissions across the entire economy if we are to meet the 2030 net-zero target, write Richard Eccleston and Megan Langridge

CLIMATE change is arguably the greatest challenge facing the planet and humanity, spurring governments, businesses and communities the world over to take urgent action to reduce emissions.

This week the state government released a report outlining Tasmania’s 2020 greenhouse gas emissions based on the national inventory data issued in June.

While technical, these reports provide an important opportunity to assess our progress towards emissions reduction targets and highlight the priorities for the next state Climate Act, which is yet to pass parliament.

The good news, which the government was keen to highlight, is that this recent data confirms that Tasmania remains one of the few places on Earth to have already achieved a net-negative emissions profile. Tasmania’s net emissions in 2020 were approximately negative 3.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gases. We can claim this below-net-zero result because the state’s forests and soils continue to absorb more (-11.6 million tonnes) carbon from the atmosphere than the state emits (7.8 million tonnes) on an annual basis.

While this is a significant achievement that we should be proud of, we can’t be complacent and must do more.

Our analysis highlights how our net-negative status is primarily driven by land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF, in the technical jargon) offsets, and these offsets are expected to decline over time. Without ambitious action, Tasmania could return to net-positive emissions status before 2030.

The immense volume of carbon stored in Tasmania’s forests is an asset, but also presents growing risks. More frequent and intense bushfires driven by climate change, increased land clearing for agriculture or development, and ageing plantations could all reduce the rate at which our forests remove carbon from the atmosphere.

Maintaining Tasmania’s world-leading emissions profile over the longer term will require a greater commitment to reducing gross emissions across the entire economy – from industrial processes, agriculture and transport. When we look at these sectors in isolation, our emissions have hardly changed over the past two decades, and our performance lags behind other Australian states.

When it comes to emissions from the all-important energy sector, Tasmania continues to perform well due to our renewable electricity assets, but more needs to be done to replace natural gas and other fossil fuels.

Sustaining Tasmania’s claim to being 100 per cent renewable will also depend upon increasing renewable electricity generation to meet growing demand as the state electrifies its transport system and industrial processes.

While Tasmania’s absolute industrial emissions are relatively low, our per-capita industrial emissions are the highest in Australia, at more than double the national average. However, reducing industrial emissions isn’t easy and requires both innovation and investment, including through the use of green hydrogen.

As Tasmania already has a very low-emissions electricity generation system, and the cost of reducing industrial emissions is high, the most important near-term emissions reduction priorities