Mission Impossible
A Close Look at Australia's New Emissions Reduction Targets
This post wraps up Australia Week at THB. Check out the four previous posts in this series:
Last week, the Australian government announced a new emissions reduction target:
To help drive the transition to net zero, the Australian Government has set a target to reduce emissions to 62-70% below 2005 levels by 2035. This is the next step on our path to net zero. It will help keep us on track for a safe and prosperous future.
Today I take a look at this target and its feasibility.
But first, let’s jump into a time machine and look at my 2011 analysis of Australia’s 2009 targets and timetable for emissions reduction. In 2009, the Australian government committed to a 60% reduction in emissions by 2050 and short term targets of 5%, 15%, and 25% (with the higher reductions conditional on actions by other nations).
I focused on the implications of the target for reductions in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and industry (FFI). I applied the Kaya identity, and specifically, the implied rates of the decarbonization of the Australian economy, measured as the reduction in the ratio carbon dioxide emissions to GDP.
I concluded that the implied rates of decarbonization in the 2009 targets and timetable were “fanciful”:
To summarize, the annual rates of decarbonization of the Australian economy implied by the bottom-up and top-down analyses suggest rates that are beyond those achieved by any major economy in recent decades over sustained periods of time. Japan achieved a rate of decarbonization of about 4.4% from 1980 to 1986 but was unable to sustain that high rate, seeing it subsequently drop to closer to 1% per year (Pielke, 2009b). In proposing to do that which has never been done, Australia is joining the United Kingdom and Japan (and others, including the European Union and United States) with aggressive emissions reductions targets and timetables that appear to be fanciful at best.
Looking back, that analysis was spot on.1
In 2020, the target year for the 2009 targets, actual FFI carbon dioxide emissions increased by 6.1% over the 2000 baseline. The 2009 targets were missed by a large margin. You can see that in the figure below, which also includes the 2025 emissions reduction targets for 2035.
Looking only at emissions can mislead — consider the big drop in emissions in the COVID-19 pandemic, which was the result of economic contraction, not climate policies. A much better indicator of the effects (or lack of effects) of emissions reduction policies is decarbonization of the economy.
The figure below tells a remarkable story. For all of the sound and fury of Australian climate politics, which have claimed the careers of a few prime ministers, there is no evidence that Australia’s emissions reduction policies have done anything to meaningfully accelerate the rate of decarbonization over many decades.
The annual rate of decarbonization in the figure above was 2.1% for the period 1992 to 2024. The figure below shows actual and implied (by the 2035 targets) rates of decarbonization for other periods.
The implied rates of decarbonization represented by the red bars assume, following the assumptions of the Australian Climate Change Authority, that GDP will grow at a rate of 2.7% annually to 2035.2
Not only are the implied rates of decarbonization far in excess of anything ever accomplished in Australia, they are also far in excess of any annual rate of decarbonization achieved by any country — ever.
It is worth noting that the Australian government has a long history of using assumed changes in land use emissions to suggest that the country has been decarbonizing, even as FFI carbon dioxide emissions have increased.
The Australia Institute explains this bit of clever accounting:
When Australia was negotiating the terms of the Kyoto Protocol (the precursor to the Paris Agreement) it lobbied successfully for the inclusion of what became known as the “Australia clause”, which allowed countries to include land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) emissions in their accounting. . .
The inclusion of the LULUCF sector is critical both because of its scale and the intensity of its emissions; it includes emissions from human-induced land use such as land clearing, crops and grazing and forest management.
The land-use sector can act as a carbon source or carbon sink – if forests are growing, carbon is reduced.
Taking a graph of Australia’s emissions over time, it is clear that Australia is not on the path to meeting its emissions targets. However, counting LULUCF emissions can lead to the mistaken impression that the country is on track with emissions reduction.
Successive Australian Governments have been cooking the books on climate for decades thanks to LULUCF.
Deep decarbonization of Australia’s or the global economy will not occur through accounting, but rather, through the mitigation of carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. That leads to some simple math and difficult politics: Fossil fuels will have to replaced where it is feasible and emissions captured where replacement is not feasible.
As I prepared this post I considered giving it a title from a different movie — “Groundhog Day.” We have been here before. Australia previous set and missed impossible targets for emissions reduction. The outcome for the 2035 emissions reduction targets will inevitably be the same as for the 2020 targets — a big miss.
As with the 2009 targets, in 2025 the adoption of impossible goals may be viewed by those promotng them as a feature rather than a flaw. The Australian government explains (emphasis added):
Adopting a 2035 target that is, and is seen to be, ambitious is crucial for unlocking national economic benefits, for creating good jobs in regions that have underpinned Australia’s economy for generations, and for delivering new opportunities for Australian farmers and First Nations communities.
Climate advocates have long acted as if decarbonization can be willed into reality. If only we would believe strongly enough, the argument goes, the global energy system will transform. The idea that beliefs cause technological change helps to explain the religious fervor of those seeking to convert or excommunicate skeptical nonbelievers and the counterproductive demands that governments commit to impossible goals.
Australia has already taught us that belief expressed through unattainable emissions reductions targets does not reduce emissions. Technologies reduce emissions, not targets.
Goals expressed through quantifiable targets are of course essential to effective policy implementation. But the targets have to be fit for purpose.
Consider, for instance, that in 2024 Australia consumed 1.52 exajoules of coal from 23 coal power plants, according to the Australian government’s Clean Energy Register. In 2023, these power plants produced about 139 Mt of carbon dioxide emissions or almost 40% of all of Australia’s FFI carbon dioxide emissons for that year.
Australia’s efforts to achieve deep decarbonization would be much more attainable if its government set a straightforward and clear target to replace all coal generation. It would take about 25 nuclear power plants to replace all of Australia’s 23 coal plants, which would almost entirely eliminate 40% of the nation’s FFI carbon dioxide emissions. Alternatively, replacing the coal plants with natural gas would reduce Australia’s emissions by 20% (as natural gas is about half as carbon intensive as coal).3
When nations adopt real-world technology targets such as these, we will know they are serious about emissions reductions. At present however, the focus is instead on being “seen to be” serious about emissions reductions.
Australia teaches us that climate policy needs more pragmatism, and less virtue signaling.
Before you go, please click that “❤️ Like.” More likes mean that THB rises in the Substack algorithm and gets in front of more readers. Thanks!
Comments welcomed on this or any of the Australia Week posts!
If you value the work here at THB, please consider subscribing or upgrading to a paid subscription. Paid subscribers make THB go and also have access to THB Pro, with PDFs of some of my books, THB Insider, Five Figures, and paywalled THB posts. Thank you!
Not all my decarbonization analyses have hit the mark — My evaluation of the UK badly missed, as I failed to include in my projections the country’s dismal economic and industrial performance.
Higher assumed GDP growth would imply larger necessary rates of decarbonization, and lower assumed GDP growth would imply smaller rates of decarbonization.
Nuclear power and natural gas use here is illustrative. You can do the same sort of math with solar, wind, geothermal, batteries, etc.
The Australia lesson that "climate policy needs more pragmatism, and less virtue signaling" is spot on. I am left wondering how much was spent not achieving targets and how much more will be wasted to chase unattainable new targets with good intentions instead of capable technologies.
Can you comment on what allows counties to continue committing to goals they know they cannot meet? Is there some rational explanation? Good intentions? Hope? Dependence on experts who say no problem. What?