Chris Bowen heads to India, China as top mandarin says Australia can’t go it alone on climate action

Chris Bowen will court investment for Australia's renewable energy sector as bureaucrats concede our climate targets alone won’t slow global warming.

Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water division head Kath Rowley says Australia can't go it alone on cutting emissions.

Chris Bowen will urge China and India to invest in Labor’s renew­ables rollout in high-level meetings with ministers and business leaders of the two major emitters, as a top government official warns that Australia’s 2035 emissions reduction target will have little impact on global warming if other nations do not pull their weight.

The Climate Change and Energy Minister told The Australian he wanted to “grow Australia’s share” of global investment in clean energy, with a Business Council of Australia-led delegation to also attend a forum in New Delhi to discuss stronger two-way investment in renew­ables.

Mr Bowen’s travel to the two major emitters comes as the coal industry pushes for the charity status and public funding of green groups to be revoked if they fail to disclose foreign donations or “engage in deceptive campaigning”.

Coal Australia chief executive Stuart Bocking has used a submission to a parliamentary committee to accuse green groups of using “secret foreign donations” to engage in climate change misinformation.

Mr Bocking is urging for a ban on foreign donations to politically active green groups and an annual report to parliament by security agencies on the state of energy security. “Including on malicious foreign interference and the dissemination of climate change and energy misinformation and dis­information through activist groups whose funding and sponsorship is not transparent,” Mr Bocking wrote in his submission.

“Secret foreign donations and deceptive astroturfing campaigns deployed by activist groups are compromising Australia’s energy abundance and security.”

With the Albanese government opting against putting a cap on fossil fuel exports in favour of developing low-carbon alternatives for trading partners, Mr Bowen said Australia needed to “engage constructively with the world’s biggest emitters on climate change”.

“There will be $2.2 trillion in clean energy investment this year, double that of spending on fossil fuels; we want to grow Australia’s share in that investment,” Mr Bowen said. “India and China are huge energy markets and their efforts to lower emissions are part of a global effort that Australia is contributing to.”

China is the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world and India is third, with China’s targets allowing it to continue increasing emissions until 2030 while India’s carbon footprint will peak even later.

With Labor being attacked by the Coalition for adopting one of the world’s most ambitious 2035 emission reduction targets, a top official from Mr Bowen’s climate change department conceded Australia going it alone on climate change would achieve little for global warming.

Under pressure from the Greens in a Senate estimates hearing last week over whether there was modelling showing the impact on temperatures from Labor’s 62-70 per cent target, Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water division head Kath Rowley said “global temperature outcome is a function of global emissions”.

“So there is no singular or linear relationship between Australia’s target and global temp­erature outcomes,” she said.

“Of course, Australia makes its full contribution to global efforts to reduce emissions in line with the Paris temperature goals.

“The target of 62 to 70 per cent was identified by the Climate Change Authority, having taken into account all of the considerations including the Paris temperature goals, as Australia’s highest possible ambition.”

Ms Rowley, who became head of the department’s emissions reduction division soon after the Albanese government was elected in 2022, said the government had not adopted any of the CCA’s policy recommendations on how to reach the 2035 target.

When Greens leader Larissa Waters asked how the government could “selectively” adopt the CCA’s headline target and “discount their calculations” on how to achieve it, Ms Rowley said the government would consider the CCA’s policy recommendations “as part of its ongoing work”.

She said the government’s existing policies were outlined in its Net Zero Plan, which was dismissed by Ms Waters as “very vague”.

While overseas, Mr Bowen will go to Beijing and meet China’s Ecology and Environment Minister, Huang Runqiu, for the annual Australia-China Ministerial Dialogue on Climate Change.

In New Delhi, he will meet India’s New and Renewable Energy Minister Pralhad Joshi for the inaugural Renewable Energy Partnership Ministers Meeting.

He will also attend the India-Australia Energy Dialogue and a session on renewable energy investment at the Australia-India CEO Forum.

Grattan Institute energy program senior fellow Tony Wood said Mr Bowen’s trip to China and India would likely be aimed at securing investment into development of low-carbon products for export to those nations.

Treasury is expecting the value of fossil fuel exports to plummet in coming decades, identifying low-carbon manufacturing of steel and iron as an export opportunity to replace the revenue. “What they offer us is a significant market for product,” Mr Wood said. “If that means some of their companies investing in Australia, then that would be a good thing.”

With some Coalition MPs arguing it was pointless for Australia to have strong climate policies when emissions were rising in far bigger economies, Mr Bowen in August wrote an opinion piece in The Australian praising the efforts of China and India in increasing the rollout of renewables. “I’m not here to defend either country, and I hope they can both lift efforts further. But let’s look at what they are doing now. China is around 19 per cent of the world’s GDP but represents almost a third of global clean energy investment,” he wrote. “Likewise, India’s renewable capacity is surging, with almost 50 per cent of its power capacity comprised of non-fossil fuel sources.”

With Labor facing pressure from the Greens to cap coal and gas exports to limit global warming, Mr Bowen in September said he would avoid any limit on exports to instead “work with other countries to decarbonise and replace their fossil fuels with our renewables in due course”.