Australia Fails the Climate Test

 Dr Hugh Saddler,  an honorary associate professor at the Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy,  in research published by the think tank, the Australia Institute, ranked the performance of 23 OECD countries and Russia on eight climate measures, including share of electricity from non-fossil fuels, per capita emissions from transport and overall emissions intensity of each economy.

He found Australia was ranked 20th or worse in seven of the eight categories. In relative terms, it had not improved in any category since 2005 and had gone backwards compared to other developed countries in four.

“Despite the last decade of growth in solar and wind energy, fossil fuels still dominate Australia’s energy sector and its rate of electrification – that is getting off coal, oil and gas for energy – is one of the worst in the OECD,” Saddler said.

Saddler explained his research showed the government’s “so-called gas-fired economic recovery”, under which the Coalition has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to fossil fuel power and opening up new gas basins, was “absolutely counter to the needs of Australia’s energy system transition”.

He pointed out that, “Over the past 15 years, Australia has squandered its golden opportunity to decouple its energy sector from fossil fuels, unlike so many other OECD countries,” he said. “As a result, Australians are left with high-polluting and inefficient power, heating, housing and transport. This also drives up our cost of living and drives down our energy productivity.”

He found all of Australia’s emissions reductions since 2005 have been due to farming activities, mainly due to a large fall in the amount of “land-clearing”. In basic terms, the annual destruction of forests and other ecosystems for agriculture and timber collection decreased over the decade from 2007 to 2017 – it still happens, but at a slower rate. Saddler’s report said if this change in how land was used was excluded from national emissions accounts Australia’s emissions had increased by 7% since 2005. 

“Large one-off reductions in land-clearing are in no way evidence of a trend towards the decarbonisation of the Australian economy,” the report said. “For the purposes of international comparison, it is important to note that most other developed countries have no capacity to benefit from large reductions in land-clearing for the simple reason that they cleared most of their land centuries ago.”

Findings included:

Australia had the second-most emissions-intensive energy system after Poland, a big coal producer.

It achieved the second smallest increase in energy productivity across the 15 years, ahead of only Portugal. This is despite federal and state energy ministers releasing a national energy productivity plan in 2015.

It has significantly increased its share of wind and solar energy but other countries have moved faster – it slipped from 13th (in 2005) to 14th (in 2019) on a ranking of the share of electricity from new renewable energy generation.

It was one of only three countries to have increased total energy combustion emissions.

Prior to Covid-19, it had the third-highest per capita transport emissions, behind the US and Canada. Both North American countries reduced per capita transport emissions faster between 2005 and 2019 than Australia.

Australia ‘lagging at the back of the pack’ of OECD countries on climate action, analysis finds | Environment | The Guardian