Australia is not on track to meet its 2030 emissions target, UN report says
Australia is not on track to meet its 2030 emissions reduction targets and global greenhouse gas emissions are showing no signs of peaking, a new UN report has warned.
In its annual emissions gap report, which looks at the gap between carbon reduction policies countries have in place and what is required to keep global warming to well below 2°C, the UN said global emissions have reached record highs, theguardian.com wrote.
It warns that about half of the G20 countries, including Australia, will fall short of meeting their nationally determined contributions under the Paris agreement and, even if they do meet them, they are still not ambitious enough to restrict warming to the levels needed.
“Current commitments expressed in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) are inadequate to bridge the emissions gap in 2030,” the report warned.
“Technically, it is still possible to bridge the gap to ensure global warming stays well below 2°C and 1.5°C, but if NDC ambitions are not increased before 2030, exceeding the 1.5°C goal can no longer be avoided.”
Australia has committed to an emissions reduction target of 26 percent to 28 percent on 2005 levels by 2030.
The UN’S report said: “There has been no improvement in Australia’s climate policy since 2017 and emission levels for 2030 are projected to be well above the NDC target.
“The latest projection published by the government shows that emissions would remain at high levels rather than reducing in line with the 2030 target.”
The report finds that annual global emissions have reached a record high of 53.5 gigatons of carbon dioxide.
On current policies, it said, annual global emissions would hit 59 gigatons of carbon dioxideequivalent by 2030. If countries met their unconditional 2030 targets they would hit 56 gigatons.
To have a 66 percent chance of meeting the 2°C Paris target, emissions would need to be down to about 40 gigatons a year by 2030 and to achieve the more ambitious target of 1.5°C they would need to fall to about 24 gigatons.
The UN warned that on current trajectories, the world was on track for about 3°C of warming by 2100, with warming to continue after that.
In a special report, the UN’S Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the world was nowhere near on track to reach the 1.5°C Paris target and that even a half degree more of warming would significantly worsen the risks of droughts, floods and extreme heat for millions of people.
The new emissions gap report said G20 countries including Australia ‘will need to implement additional policies’ to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an additional 2.5 gigatones a year to achieve their unconditional commitments under the Paris agreement.
Despite the report findings, Australia’s environment minister, Melissa Price, said on Wednesday the government had ‘the right mix of scalable policies to meet our 2030 targets’.
“Policies like the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation have led to emissions reductions in the electricity sector, for instance,” she said.
“And they continue to deliver results. Wind and solar generation in the national electricity market is projected to increase by 250 percent over the next three years.”