Climate targets must remain locked in: Ai Group, Business Council of Australia

A string of high-profile companies and peak business groups have swung their support behind the 43 per cent emissions reduction target.

Big Australian businesses have backed a 43 per cent emissions reduction goal but warned against further political ructions that would damage investment.

Big business has swung its support behind Labor’s climate change targets but cautioned against any further political swings that would backtrack on emissions goals over fears of investments being damaged in the move to a greener economy.

The Greens’ support for Labor’s 2030 goal of a 43 per cent cut in emissions on 2005 levels received broad backing from a string of high-profile resources companies, including Rio Tinto, Shell, Origin Energy and Woodside Energy.

With those companies all members of the Business Council of Australia, which last year called for a more ambitious 46-50 per cent emissions reduction, the focus from corporate Australia was on politicians in Canberra moving on from a decade of climate wars.

The Ai Group said political certainty for business was now critical to deliver on the target.

“Achieving the 43 per cent target is going to take a lot of investment and business needs some certainty that those investments aren’t going to be sunk by the next shift in the political winds,” it said.

Big mining and energy companies backed the increased targets as they face pressure from investors to deliver on their own medium-term and 2050 net-zero emissions targets.

“A challenging but achievable target is only part of the story. The next chapter is about getting there.

“That is especially urgent because the war in Ukraine has sent power and gas prices way up.”

The BCA also warned against repeating past missteps.

“To reach these targets, we can’t make the same mistakes as the past and let ambiguity and uncertainty undermine progress, so we encourage the Senate to pass this bill quickly,” BCA chief executive Jennifer Westacott said.

“Not only can we reach our targets without holding up job-creating projects, these investments in new and existing industries will be critical to ­deliver emissions reductions alongside better opportunities for Australians.”

The oil and gas industry lobby APPEA backed the target but hit back at Greens plans to ban new gas projects.

“The Greens have been abundantly clear that they want to close down the Australian gas industry – that would mean no royalties, no tax, no jobs, nothing to replace coal with, nothing to support renewables and no revenue to government,” APPEA acting chief executive Damian Dwyer said.

“As the Prime Minister said recently, these are the kinds of policies that would have a devastating impact on the economy.”

Big mining and energy companies backed the increased targets as they face pressure from investors to deliver on their own medium-term and 2050 net-zero emissions targets.

Mining giant Rio Tinto in June hosted Anthony Albanese at its Yarwun alumina refinery in Gladstone where it laid out a renewable energy plan and said Labor’s approach aligned with the company’s strategy.

“The government’s climate policies are very aligned with our own strategy,” Rio Tinto’s Australian chief executive Kellie Parker said. “We are working towards net-zero emissions by 2050 and we’re very encouraged by the government's support of our plans to decarbonise our operations, which we will need to do to meet our global climate targets to halve our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030.”

Origin Energy said the political shift was helping the company as it spends on low-emissions energy projects. “Support for the ­nation’s climate target from across the political spectrum is crucial to giving companies like Origin the confidence to invest in low-emissions energy supply, and help facilitate emissions reduction across the broader economy,” a spokeswoman said.

Energy giant Shell – which along with Origin is a major Queensland LNG producer under the government spotlight over a gas squeeze – said it “strongly supported” the emissions reduction target for giving industries the certainty they needed to invest in the energy transition.

Woodside Energy said the 43 per cent target was“largely aligned with our own targets and emissions reduction efforts, and we welcome the certainty the legislation would provide”.