This will dramatically increase pressure on Australia at UN summit in New York next week to step up its efforts

Australia’s international greenhouse pledge is getting easier to reach, with new calculations obtained by Guardian Australia showing it may now require less than a third of the emissions reductions envisaged despite both major parties insisting it was a “substantial commitment”.



The new figures may explain why the Abbott government remains confident it can meet the target even though it has repealed the carbon tax, has as yet no legislated alternative policy and is contemplating reducing or closing the renewable energy target. But they will also dramatically increase the already intense pressure on Australia at the special United Nations summit in New York next week to step up its efforts.

The easy ride to this initial target of a 5% reduction in emissions by 2020 compared with 2000 levels is in large part due to the closure of energy-hungry industries such as aluminium smelters, as well as a broader reduction in electricity demand.

In 2012 the promise to reduce emissions by 5% of 2000 levels by 2020 was calculated to require the cumulative reduction of 755m tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Last year new government calculations reduced that figure to 431 million tonnes.

Now new calculations by Frontier Economics say the figure could be as low as 225m tonnes, if the renewable energy target (RET) stays in place to drive investment into clean generation, or somewhere around 300m tonnes if the government accepts advice to pare back the RET from its review panel, headed by prominent businessman and self-professed climate sceptic Dick Warburton.

“Given the fall in electricity demand projections in the past year, we expect that Australia’s abatement task to 2020 will be considerably easier than expected in the most recent official projections, even if the review panel’s changes to the RET are implemented,” Frontier Economics reports in its September bulletin.

“The most recent official forecasts project a cumulative abatement task of 421 (million tonnes of carbon dioxide) to 2020. We estimate that this is now closer to 225-279 (million tonnes) without any change to the RET, or 264-336 (million tonnes) if the panel recommendations are adopted.”

The firm’s managing director, Danny Price, co-chairs an expert reference group on the Abbott government’s as yet-unlegislated emissions reduction fund.

Australia is under pressure to commit to a “bold” new post-2020 greenhouse emissions reduction target at next week’s special UN summit, called by the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon.

The summit, designed to build momentum towards a successful post-2020 international climate deal at a conference in Paris next year, will be attended by more than 100 world leaders, including the US president, Barack Obama.

The foreign minister, Julie Bishop, will represent Australia. The prime minister, Tony Abbott, will be in New York the next day for a summit on foreign fighters, but says he cannot arrive earlier because of commitments in parliament. The leaders of China, India and Russia are also not attending.

“We absolutely need Australia to use the UN summit to commit to bringing forward a post- 2020 target well in advance of Paris,” said the deputy director of the Climate Institute, Erwin Jackson.

On Sunday a “people’s climate march” in New York and around the globe – including in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Darwin – will try to focus attention on the 23 September UN meeting, and has been billed as the largest climate action march in history.

The Abbott government has pledged to review its 5% target next year, and Bishop’s office referred to this commitment when asked what Australia might say at the summit. The government has not said whether this review would extend to considering what deeper emission reduction targets Australia might commit to after 2020.

The independent Climate Change Authority, which the government has not yet succeeded in abolishing, recommended in February that the pre-2020 target should be trebled to at least 15% and that Australia look to a longer term target of between 40% and 60% reductions in emissions by 2030.

The authority said Australia’s 5% target was already much weaker than targets set by countries including the US, Britain and Norway, and points out that countries such as China are also stepping up emission reduction efforts.

It says all the 2009 conditions for moving above a 5% target have been met, as have many of the conditions for a 15% target.

In 2009, both Labor and the Coalition signed on to a clear set of conditions for moving above 5% and, according the the authority, many of these have been met,

But Abbott now insists the government will not commit to anything beyond the minimum 5% target “in the absence of very serious like-binding commitments in other countries and there’s no evidence of that”.

Price said: “There are two, not necessarily mutually exclusive, ways of viewing this more moderate emissions reduction task.

“As a nation, Australia should be pleased with its progress towards achieving its reduction target and more confident that the target is achievable with the existing suite of policies.

“The speed with which Australia has moved from an ambitious target (at the time it was set) to an eminently achievable target may ease community, business and political concerns about setting a tougher emissions abatement target post 2020. This is important as it is very likely that Australia will be subject over the next year or two to strong international pressure to cut emissions further.”

The Abbott government is locked in negotiations with crossbenchers and the Greens over amendments to secure the passage of its “direct action” climate policy. The most contentious demands are that it impose onerous emissions “baselines” and financial penalties on high-emitting industry across the economy, to ensure that emission reductions “purchased” from a proposed new government fund aren’t overtaken by emissions increases in other industries.

The government had intended to decide on these baselines and penalties – the so-called “safeguards mechanism” – next year, but the Greens and independent senator Nick Xenophon are demanding immediate assurances.