Australia’s carbon emissions are again the highest on record, new data from the emissions-tracking organization Ndevr Environmental showed.
Ndevr replicates the federal government’s national greenhouse gas inventory quarterly reports, but releases them months ahead of the official data.
Data it has produced for the year up to September shows that Australia is still on track to miss its Paris target of a 26 to 28 percent cut to emissions on 2005 levels by 2030.
If emissions continued at their current rate, Australia would miss the target by a cumulative 1.1 billion tonnes, Ndevr managing director Matt Drum said.
When excluding unreliable land use data, Australia’s emissions for the year to September reached 558.3 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent, an all-time high.
“There’s still no policy in place to ratchet them down which is why they’re increasing,” Drum said.
Electricity sector emissions were stable, but fugitive emissions, and emissions from stationary energy and transport are all still trending sharply upwards.
The release of the report came as Australian Minister for the Environment Melissa Price addressed global COP24 climate change talks in Katowice, Poland.
Both the coalition government and Labor have not ruled out using controversial carryover credits from the Kyoto protocol to help meet Australia’s obligations under the Paris agreement.
Labor has promised that if it wins the election it would increase Australia’s target to 45 percent on 2005 levels, in line with recommendations from the independent Climate Change Authority.
Ndevr’s analysis said this would require a reduction of 197.1 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent based on current emissions levels, which would be equal to taking 75 million cars off the road for a year. In comparison, the coalition’s emission reduction target would require an 80.8 million tonne reduction.
Breaking up Labor’s target across sectors, Ndevr suggests a range of reductions would be necessary in several industries, including 61.2 million tonnes from the electricity sector, 33.4 million tonnes from the stationary energy sector, 23.7 million tonnes from agriculture and 34.2 million tonnes from transport.
“If Labor come into government we can’t afford a policy vacuum,” Drum said. “It’s looking grim. We need policy levers and we need them quickly.”
Drum said the need for action was so urgent there would be no time for a full redesign of policy if there was a change of government.
Instead, he said existing policies, such as the safeguard mechanism, should be amended.
“They need to utilize existing policy like the safeguard mechanism and tweak it so it achieves what it is intended to achieve, which is reduce emissions,” he said.
Australian Greens spokesperson Sarah Hanson-Young said that the nation was using “creative emissions accounting” to try to meet its Paris targets.
“Counting Kyoto credit towards Paris cheats our environment and the rest of the world,” she said. “Our emissions are going up, yet our environment minister is telling the world we are doing our bit to meet our Paris targets.”
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