Australian Greenhouse Gas Emissions Increase
According to Australia’s Climate Analytics, current trends indicate that greenhouse gas emissions will escalate to a point whereby the levels will be way past the Paris agreement target. The benchmark level is to reduce 2005 level pollution by 26-28% by 2030.
The data show emissions climbed by 1.3% in the year to March 2018. Fugitive emissions jumped 13.7%. Numbers were up on all sectors except electricity which dropped 4.3% in the year to March 2018 and land usage which registered a 5.2% carbon sink.
The Climate Analytics director, Bill Hare, said these figures showed Australia was still far from meeting its Paris commitment to reduce emissions by between 26% and 28% by 2030 from its 2005 levels.
“While emissions from the national electricity market continue to decrease due to increasing renewable electricity, Australian emissions as a whole continue to increase,” he said.
“On present trends, with virtually no policies apart from the renewable energy target, which will expire in 2020 and not be replaced, emissions are set to gallop way past the Paris agreement target.”
Matt Drum, the Managing director of NDEVR environmental, said that the root of the rising emissions is the absence of government policy:
“All the figures show emissions are increasing because they’ve got no policy. What I’m really interested in is what policy is Labor going to reveal in the coming weeks?”
He added, “The current government have made it very clear they’re not interested in doing anything about emissions.”
Kelly O’Shanassy, Australian Conservation Foundation’s Chief Executive Officer stated that it is “embarrassing” that the level of pollution continues to rise in a wealthy nation like Australia.
“This latest pollution scorecard casts extreme doubt over the Morrison Government’s claim that Australia will meet our 2030 emissions reduction target ‘in a canter’ without strong new action.
“This latest result is also flattered by falling emissions from power generation, driven by the construction of solar and wind energy under our national renewable energy target.
“The Morrison government has declared it will not replace this target after 2020, meaning Australian climate pollution is at risk of growing even further.”
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