Covid-19 puts lid on carbon emissions

A sharp fall in transport during the pandemic helped Australia record a new emissions low

Energy Minister Angus Taylor says emissions are at their lowest on record. Picture: John Feder

Australia’s carbon emissions fell to their lowest on record, down 5 per cent on the previous year,­ according to new commonwealth figures that show the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The data, from an Energy ­Department update to be released on Monday, says emissions fell 0.6 per cent in the three months to December 31, for a total annual fall of 5 per cent.

Energy Minister Angus Taylor said emissions were at their lowest on record: 20.1 per cent below 2005 levels, the baseline year for Australia’s Paris Agreement target.

“Despite upward pressure from growth in exports and ­industry, emissions per capita and the emissions intensity of the economy continue to fall and are at their lowest levels in three decades,” Mr Taylor said.

“Investing in low-emissions technologies will enable Australia’s continued success in meeting and beating our emissions reduction targets.”

The Energy Department document warns the decreases were not as significant compared to the September quarter and reflected “an increase in transport emissions” as restrictions eased.

Scott Morrison is expected to announce a target of net-zero emissions by 2050 later this year amid pressure from the Biden administration and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

The Prime Minister will ­attend the G7 meeting in Cornwall next month at the invitation of Mr Johnson. The group’s permanent members have already agreed to stop direct funding of coal-fired power stations in poorer nations by the end of 2021.

The International Energy Agency has warned that a global net zero emissions goal by 2050 cannot be reached unless new coal mines, gas fields and oilfields are immediately stopped.

Hugh Saddler, an energy analyst at the Australian National University, said some of the biggest improvements in Australia’s emissions profile since 2005 would not be repeatable in the long term. Most significantly, he said, big cuts in emissions from land use and forestry had made a substantial impact on total greenhouse output but did not have much more to offer.

“All the talk about where we are in relation to the Paris targets tells us nothing about what’s going to happen afterwards because we haven’t got any further reductions to realise from the land sector,” Dr Saddler said.

Separate figures for emissions from the national electricity market show a drop of 2.7 per cent in the three months ending March 2021, or an annual decrease of 5.6 per cent.

The Energy Department document says that since the peak in September 2006, there has been a 27.5 per cent, or 31.7Mt, decline in emissions of carbon dioxide to 83.6Mt in December.

“The most important factors causing this long-term decline in carbon dioxide emissions include the continuing shift in the generation of electricity towards renewable fuel sources, and away from coal, and decreasing emissions in the land sector,” it says.

Actual emissions in 2020 were 499Mt, down from 525.1Mt in 2019. The most significant fall was from the transport sector – down 12.1 per cent. Mr Taylor said: “The continuing structural decline in emissions from electricity is driven by Australia’s world-leading deployment of solar and wind.”

Dr Saddler said petroleum consumption showed a large decline in the number of cars on the road during the early months of the pandemic, but activity had been increasing since.

The fall in 2020 emissions was boosted by the carbon capture and sequestration project at Chevron’s Gorgon LNG natural gas plant in Western Australia.