Australia’s carbon emissions have barely fallen and a massive task lies ahead
On the surface the latest emissions figures released this week look promising – a 27Mt annual drop in emissions is pretty good. If we kept up that rate, we would hit zero emission around 2039 – enough to limit warming to well under 2C.
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Except we are not going to do that – quite the opposite.
The problem is emissions only really fell because of the lockdowns last year.
Once again electricity emissions were down because the reality of cheaper renewable energy is impervious to the inaction of the Morrison government, but the biggest fall in the past year was transport emissions.
Transport emissions dropped 22% in the June quarter last year as everyone got off the road and air travel ground to a halt.
But now they are recovering.
In the March quarter this year transport emissions were only 5% down on where they were before the pandemic and had risen 4% from the last three months of 2020.
In the March quarter of this year, the combined emissions from stationary energy, fugitive emissions, industrial processes, waste and agriculture were actually 1.5% higher than they were in the March quarter of last year.
Total emissions in the March quarter were also 0.04% higher than they were in the December quarter of 2020.
Take away the lockdowns and Australia’s emissions are still rising.
Also rising is the level of spin from the Morrison government. At no point in his media release did Angus Taylor, the minister for energy and emissions reductions, mention the impact of the pandemic on cutting emissions.
Nope, just praise for what a great job the government is doing despite the pandemic.
Taylor also noted that “Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are now at 20.8% below 2005 levels”.
If it feels like that large fall has barely been noticeable in your life, that’s because in reality there has been no drop in emissions at all. There was nothing to notice.
The key is “land use”.
In 2005 there was a massive amount of land clearing especially in Queensland – land clearing counts as emissions under the category of “land use”.
Since then New South Wales and Queensland have limited the amount of forest clearing and, as a result, our emissions have fallen when you include “land use”.
So great is the impact of land use that it accounts for 112MT (or 88%) of the 128Mt fall in annual emissions since 2005.
If, like every other country, we exclude land use, our annual emissions have fallen just 2.9%, and if we exclude the fall in transport due to the lockdown, the drop is just 0.5%.
In effect, nothing.
But from now on we can’t rely on pretend falls in land use. To get to net zero, actual emissions have to fall – and quickly.
Right now, the government would have us believe that in the 22 years from 2005 to 2027 Australia’s total annual emissions excluding land use will fall by just 28Mt but in the following 22 years they will fall from 496Mt to zero?
That is the task ahead of us if we want to get to net zero by 2050.
Unfortunately, if we wait till 2030 to begin reducing emissions to zero, it will be too late – we will have already emitted more than enough CO2 to ensure temperatures will rise above 2C.
The pandemic produced a terrible cost to the economy, but it also showed us the level of emissions cuts we need.
Instead, this week we had deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce comparing those who questioned his stance on the climate crisis to a baptism where parents were required to “denounce Satan”, and we had the federal environment minister, Sussan Ley, approving Wollongong Coal’s application to expand its underground coalmining at its Russell Vale colliery north of Wollongong.
We need to reduce emissions by at least the amount that was cut last year, but without the economic calamity of a pandemic and lockdowns.
That is a massive task – requiring levels of policy and economic planning that are as complex and urgent as required for the pandemic and vaccine rollout.
It is a task that thus far the Morrison government has shown it is not able – or even willing – to manage.
If, like every other country, we exclude land use, our annual emissions have fallen just 2.9%, and if we exclude the fall in transport due to the lockdown, the drop is just 0.5%.