While the 2050 battle rages in Australia, the world is talking 2030

This week’s brawl within the federal government over whether to commit to a target of net zero by 2050 must look to much of the rest of the world like a glimpse of the political past.

“I am deadset against net zero emissions,” outspoken Nationals MP Matt Canavan tweeted during the week, enthusiastically joining in the cut-and-thrust between Liberal moderates and Nationals hardliners over the 2050 target.

Yet elsewhere in the world, 2050 is a given and 2030 is the issue. At the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow next month, developed nations will be called upon to cut their emissions by at least 50 per cent by the end of the decade to make it possible to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, identified as the point at which catastrophic climate change could spin out of control.

The host of the summit, British Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader Boris Johnson, has committed to reducing emissions by 68 per cent by 2030. Australia has not so far updated its existing commitment to cut emissions by 26-28 per cent from 2005 levels by the same date.

And Prime Minister Scott Morrison is not just under international pressure. Moderate Liberals have made it clear they want to move with the rest of the world.

The political cost of slow climate action is growing. Federal Liberal Party director Andrew Hirst emailed members last week calling for a fighting fund to protect MPs like Josh Frydenberg and Katie Allen in Melbourne and Dave Sharma, Jason Falinski and Trent Zimmerman in Sydney, who face challenges from pro-climate action conservative independents.

Barnaby Joyce has given the government hope he may agree to net zero emissions by 2050.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Nor are the Nationals in lockstep. Unlike Canavan and Resources Minister Keith Pitt, Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce has signalled his support can be bought with enough financial support for regional economies.

So out of step with global ambitions is the 2050 debate that it has prompted at least one international onlooker to ask if it is genuine.

“The cynic in me wonders if it is in some sense staged, a piece of performance art,” says the renowned climatologist and author Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Centre at Pennsylvania State University. “It allows the Prime Minister to appear to be taking a bold stance by pledging net zero emissions in 2050, when it is in fact an anaemic pledge that kicks the can down the road, decades too late.”

The black summer bushfires have given a horrifying new backdrop to the debate over emissions and what failing to cut them would mean.Credit: AP

Mann, who wrote much of his new book The New Climate War while living in Australia on sabbatical during the black summer bushfires, knows how bitterly climate is contested in Australian politics. “Australia is clearly the last holdout right now among major industrial nations when it comes to making serious climate commitments.”

Australia’s former top climate diplomat, Howard Bamsey, says net zero by 2050 is a “very low bar” and the bare minimum expected by our allies. “If you think you’re not going to get there, then you need some blood on the floor to show that you’ve tried,” he says.

Why 2030 matters

In the simplest terms 2030 is crucial to tackling climate change because it forces governments to take immediate action rather than delaying action until it becomes impossible to achieve the Paris Agreement goal of keeping warming to within 2 degrees - and as close to 1.5 as possible - by 2100.

According to the United Nations’ last major climate report in August, to have just a 67 per cent chance of holding warming to 1.5 degrees, starting from 2020 we could afford to emit just 400 billion tonnes more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Given that the world currently emits about 40 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases each year, by January 2021 that would have stood at 360 billion tonnes, and by 2030 our “allowance” would be exhausted.

“To have any chance of hitting [Paris goals] we need immediate steep cuts,” says Professor Will Steffen, former executive director of the Australian National University Climate Change Institute and a councillor with the Climate Council.

“Setting a 2030 target that allows for a gradual transition to net zero emissions helps avoid locking in carbon-intensive economic pathways and can avoid costly rates of change in later years,” says a new report on the gap between current targets and keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees by Climate Analytics, a global climate policy centre and think tank.

Coal stockpiles in Gladstone in June. “If G20 countries - including Australia - choose business-as-usual, climate change will soon send Australia’s high living standards up in flames,” says Selwin Hart, a top climate adviser to the UN.Credit: Peter Davis

In climate negotiations, there is also a view that wealthy countries have a responsibility to cut faster than developing nations because they have already benefited from growing wealthy by exploiting fossil fuels, and because they have the financial resources to act.

The Prime Minister and the Treasurer are responding to the international pressure, albeit more slowly than many on the internationals stage would like. While Joe Biden announced a commitment to cut emissions by 50 per cent by 2030 as he assumed the US presidency, Morrison says he wants Australia to “preferably” reach net zero by 2050.

Johnson outlined the economic opportunities in a clean revolution when he said “in the years to come, the only great powers will be green powers”. Frydenberg echoed this message and warned that global investors mark Australia down as a risky backwater.

“We cannot run the risk that markets falsely assume we are not transitioning in line with the rest of the world,” Frydenberg said.

Like other G20 nations, Germany takes net zero by mid-century for granted, and it’s now tackling immediate domestic politics. Germany has committed to cut emissions 65 per cent by 2030, and the government is battling bad press as reports show the country is on track to achieve only 50 per cent by the end of the decade.

But successive federal governments have been hamstrung for a decade by internal division over climate. While a majority of MPs recognises there’s support for greater action among urban voters, they’ve been blocked by some of those representing rural electorates as well as blue-collar workers in coal mines and power plants.

Having identified climate policy as a prime ministerial graveyard, Morrison adopted a “technology not taxes” mantra. Cuts would be made to emissions only if they could be made without cost to industry. As a result, Australia has yet to update its 2030 target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 26 per cent based on 2005 levels, making it even more of an outlier among peer nations.

The government is working on an updated version of its technology roadmap which could offer a pathway to a net zero deadline. It will focus on expected greenhouse reductions from investing in low-emissions technology.

Can it be done?

According to scientists and engineers, deep and fast cuts can be made. The cost of renewable energy technology has fallen faster than expected and rates of adoption have exceeded even optimistic predictions.

Australian state and territory governments have all adopted targets of net zero by 2050 or earlier, while this week’s announcement by NSW that it would pursue a 50 per cent by 2030 target puts it into line with Victoria’s ambitions.

Australia is expected to increase its emissions reduction goals ahead of the Glasgow climate summit, but questions remain over whether it will be enough. Credit: PA

The NSW decision also suggests that there is a way through the political impasse within the Coalition as well.

Modelling relied upon by the NSW government in adopting the target suggests that it can be met through four main measures.

The first is the replacement of the coal-fired power fleet with renewables based in so-called Renewable Energy Zones across the state. In these zones the government agrees to streamline permits for renewables and foots the bill for transmission infrastructure.

Other policies include a raft of measures to make it cheaper and easier to own electric cars and a fund to help industry replace equipment.

Renewable Energy Zones have been key to winning the backing of NSW Nationals leader John Barilaro, with NSW forecasting its emissions reduction drive will attract about $12 billion of investment across the economy by 2030, with two-thirds of that expected to flow into regional communities.

The zone around Joyce’s federal seat is expected to drive $10 billion in investment into the region.

Similarly, Victoria’s plan includes pumping public money into programs to spur investments in renewables, private uptake of solar and industry innovation.

Earlier this year the International Energy Agency recommended that in the near term government should consider “halting construction of new coal power plants and phasing out coal power by 2040 (or 2030 for developed nations), phasing out combustion engine cars by 2035, ending fossil fuel subsidies, and rapidly accelerating renewables deployment over the next decade to decarbonise the power system by 2050”.

The federal government’s “technology not taxes” policy embraces some of these measures - but it also maintains fossil fuel subsidies such as the $7.8 billion fuel tax rebate. It is also investing public money in large-scale carbon capture and storage in the hope of keeping some fossil fuels running in a net zero world.

Climate Action Tracker, an independent scientific analysis group, was scathing in its assessment: “The government appears intent on replacing fossil fuels with fossil fuels: the 2021-22 budget allocates large sums ($52.9 million) to gas infrastructure projects and a gas-fired power station ($30 million), with no new support for renewable energy nor electric vehicles.”

Their overall verdict on Australia’s performance so far? “Highly Insufficient”.

Given that COP26 starts in less than a month, the Morrison government does not have much time left to convince the world otherwise.