Labor is poised to make a big call on our nation’s carbon emissions target. But who is Albanese going to listen to?
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Version 0 of 1. Australia’s 2035 target for cutting emissions will reveal how serious we are about addressing the climate crisis Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Want to get this in your inbox when it publishes? Sign up for the Clear Air Australia newsletter here The climate crisis is often a fight over numbers – and we are coming towards the end of a big one. It will shape how ambitious Australia will be in addressing this era-defining problem, over the next decade and beyond. The Albanese government is weighing a decision on the national emissions reduction target for 2035. Along with the policies that follow, it will be a legacy marker for a prime minister who is sometimes accused of being risk averse. The lobbying in the run-up has transformed the climate policy debate. It often used to be a debate between business interests opposing action and environmentalists urging leaders to act. But that was then, this is now. In terms of influence, it has become an argument between business and business. Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter Climate and environment organisations still make a case, as do those from other sectors. But the most prominent voice for strong action has been from investors and businesses with billions to deploy in new developments. Called Business for 75%, the group is led by Future Super and Andrew Forrest’s green energy and mining company Fortescue and backed by more than 500 companies. They say this is a critical moment in which Australia must prioritise cutting emissions and backing green industries if the country is to successfully wean itself off fossil fuels. Last week, it released an analysis by consultants at Deloitte that suggested the economic benefits of adopting a target of a 75% cut (compared with where emissions were in 2005) would spur far more investment and lead to greater economic growth than lower alternatives. Its position is largely backed by climate campaigners, including those publicly calling for much deeper cuts, including net zero by 2035. But the push for 75% is strongly opposed by some others in business. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the country’s largest business network, has argued the country’s 2030 goal (a 43% cut) was slipping out of reach and cautioned against setting a “more ambitious” target for 2035 as it could “flatten the economy”. The Business Council of Australia is also influential but has been slow to back a number publicly as it navigates internal differences within its membership, which spans banks, green investors and big miners. It is not the first time the BCA has struggled with its climate position. In 2018, it argued the then Labor opposition’s proposed 45% emissions reduction target for 2030 would wreck the economy. By 2021 it was arguing the opposite – that the momentum towards net zero emissions was “unstoppable” – and backed a 2030 target of between 46% and 50%, more than either major party was prepared to support. This time it has commissioned modelling from management consultants McKinsey. Climate campaigners familiar with it say it has returned to being comparatively pessimistic about the costs of climate action. The key advice to the government is coming from the Climate Change Authority, chaired by the former New South Wales Liberal treasurer and longtime climate advocate Matt Kean. Officially, the government is yet to receive the authority’s position but it has a pretty good idea of where it will land. Kean has been consulting on a 2035 target of between 65% and 75%. Last year the authority said this range “would be ambitious and could be achievable if additional action is taken”. What should people make of these esoteric numbers? People who want rapid action on climate differ over what actually qualifies as an ambitious goal. Some expert assessments take a mostly topdown approach, calculating Australia’s fair share of a strong global effort to live up to the science-based goals of the 2015 Paris agreement. Others are bottom up, emphasising what they calculate is economically, socially and technologically achievable. The authority says its 65-75% consultation range was based on an assessment of a range of evidence: the science, international action, the economic and social impact, and technology development. A 65% target would mean cutting Australia’s climate pollution roughly in half in the next decade. A 75% target would mean slashing it by about two-thirds. Those goals sound particularly exacting when held up against the past 20 years. According to the national accounts, Australia’s climate pollution is 28% lower than it was in 2005 but hardly any progress has been made on the main challenge: cutting total emissions from fossil fuel industries. They are down only 2%. Australia is starting well behind. But the authority’s preliminary range sounds more achievable if you account for the cut in pollution the government believes will happen, from policies already in place. According to official projections, federal and state action will reduce the country’s emissions to at least 51% below 2005 levels by 2035. Sign up to Clear Air Australia Adam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisis after newsletter promotion The question for the Albanese government is this: with an electoral landslide in its pocket and a progressive majority in the Senate, how much political capital is it prepared to invest in propelling the country beyond that floor of 51% over the next 10 years? There are plenty of opportunities for quick action. An obvious example is coordinating national action to boost energy efficiency and electrification in homes and commercial buildings, reducing both emissions and costs. Aggressively targeting methane – a potent heat-trapping gas with a huge short-term warming impact, and the focus of a global pledge that the government signed but hasn’t really yet acted on – is another. The safeguard mechanism applied to emissions from major industrial sites could be expanded to cover more areas and tightened to remove obvious loopholes. The fuel excise rebate paid to big miners to offset their diesel bill could be cut to encourage cleaner heavy vehicles. What remains of the native forest logging industry is mostly uneconomic and could be managed down. Logic suggests that the government will need to reckon more directly with its continued support for new fossil fuel export projects. The expansion of liquified natural gas developments, in particular, has added significantly to pollution in Australia, as well as overseas. But there are also areas in which deep immediate cuts are more challenging. In transport, turning over the national car fleet takes about 15 years and Australians are still buying far more dirty vehicles than clean. Australians are flying more than ever and alternatives to jet fuel are an early work-in-progress. In agriculture, equipment can be cleaned up but deeper reductions might mean forcibly reducing the number of livestock, something nobody seriously suggests. In industry, there are plants and practices where the clean tech needed is not yet available. The development of green hydrogen – hyped as a replacement for gas – has been much slower than hoped. The Climate Change Authority has warned that achieving a target of more than 75% by 2035 could lead to “significant and costly economic and social upheaval”. None of this is an argument against the country throwing significant policies and resources at finding and deploying solutions. Doing that is likely to lead to unexpected successes, such as the spectacular roll out and reduction in the cost of solar energy, now being followed in batteries. This is the point emphasised by investors and pro-climate businesses when they argue Australia should go hard and stretch to reach a target range into the 70s – that it otherwise risks missing out on benefits of the green economy that nearly everyone agrees it needs to build over the next 25 years. We’ll know soon whether Anthony Albanese agrees. |