The big picture on emissions

The latest national greenhouse gas emission figures expose a conundrum at the heart of Australia’s challenge of how best to deliver on global aspirations to combat climate change. On one measure, the September quarter update released by the federal environment department last week is cause for celebration: emission levels for the three months to September decreased by 1.4 per cent. Emissions from the National Electricity Market up to the December quarter were the lowest in a decade. Reduced emissions were recorded from diesel consumption across transport, agriculture and mining. Australia’s emissions for the year to September were 15.1 per cent below the peak recorded in 2007 and 2.6 per cent below emissions in 2000 and 11.5 per cent below 2005 levels. In per capita terms and when measured per unit of economic activity, emissions were at their lowest levels in 29 years.

Reduced emissions from electricity, in particular, have come at a heavy price. Environment Minister Melissa Price said the Clean Energy Finance Corporation had invested $6.4 billion in energies of the future, leveraging $21bn in the actual development of low-emissions technology. The Australian Renewable Energy Agency had also provided $1.35bn in grant funding to 441 new renewable energy projects to help integrate low-emissions technology into our energy grid. Rather than celebrate, however, lobby groups seized upon the headline figure that shows emissions for the year to September are estimated to be 536 Mt CO2-e, up 0.9 per cent on the previous year. The bottom line hammered home to Energy Minister Angus Taylor by ABC Insiders host Barrie Cassidy was our greenhouse gas emissions were still rising.

But the details behind the increase present a greater positive for the global picture and provide a snapshot of the dilemma facing Australia as it emerges as the world’s biggest supplier of liquefied natural gas. Exports of LNG were up almost 20 per cent in the past year; the energy needed to refrigerate and prepare the gas for export explains the rise in total emissions. Oil and gas industry group, APPEA, is trying to highlight the positive story on gas exports, for the economy and global emissions. Export earnings from LNG have been revised up for 2018-19 and are forecast to be $50.4bn, an increase of nearly 60 per cent, thus overtaking metallurgical coal as our second largest resources energy export. According to APPEA, for every tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) emitted in LNG production in Australia, between 5.5 and 9.5 tonnes of emissions from the coal alternative can be avoided globally. Recent government estimates show our LNG exports were reducing emissions by at least 130 million tonnes a year in countries where it was used. This is equal to one-quarter of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Groups such as the Climate Council see only a glass half empty. Ignoring the jobs and economic benefits of gas exports, detractors complain producing and exporting LNG is driving up emissions growth at home. They say between 2015 and 2020, emissions from LNG exports will effectively cancel out emissions reductions from our Renewable Energy Target. Such thinking gives weight to claims climate change politics are a Trojan horse for a much bigger anti-development, anti-capitalist agenda. It underscores comments by radical author Naomi Klein that climate change supercharges the pre-existing case for virtually every progressive demand on the books, binding them into a coherent agenda based on a clear scientific imperative. Evidence of this abounds — whether it be opposition to eating meat, luxury travel or running the world on gas.

There is a danger that what has been bipartisan support for climate change policies that protect our trade-exposed industries is in peril from the demands of extremists. Aluminium smelters are beset by a faltering power supply system, while big corporations are cowering at the prospect of social media bullying and the terrors of lawfare. The bottom line will always be this: Australia could quit all economic activity tomorrow and make no difference to the global climate. Judging emissions data must always focus on the big picture.