The Australian Government continues to state that its ‘Direct Action’ climate policy is working, and that Australia is in line to meet and even beat our international climate targets. But, unfortunately we keep seeing more evidence that the policy is not working and that our greenhouse pollution is going up.

But, as greenhouse pollution continues rising, something is very wrong with the policy settings.

As Reputex recently pointed out “despite the direct action policy, national emissions are expected to rise from 534 million tonnes in 2015 to 577 by 2020 – three per cent above 2000 levels, and well short of the government’s target of a five per cent reduction.”

It turns out that the only way Australia will meet even our extremely low 5% pollution reduction target for 2020 is through an accounting process and a deal struck around the Kyoto Protocol.

When negotiating on the Kyoto Agreement, Australia held international negotiations to ransom, ultimately cutting a deal to be the only developed country to be able to increase pollution during the first Kyoto commitment period (2008-2012) rather than decrease it.

Australia was allowed a 108 per cent target meaning that we could increase our climate pollution 8%. It turned out that we did not increase pollution as much as the allowance we negotiated and Australia banked that as credit to apply to the 2020 target.

Some of the reasons for the amount banked – 128 million tonnes in credits between 2008 and 2012 – were that manufacturing decreased during the period, coal mining reduced and there was a lot less carbon pollution from deforestation since 1990, following a period when deforestation in Australia was at a high level.

Last week, on 24 November, the second-last auction under the Government’s Emissions Reduction Fund was held.

The ERF remains the government’s main policy mechanism for reducing greenhouse pollution under its Direct Action Plan. The auction was notable for a few reasons. It saw 47 contracts awarded, far fewer than the 73 from the previous auction, and $367 million committed compared with $516 million previously.

Alongside a clear waning of interest there is a much bigger problem – the government has now used up 83% of the ERF’s $2.55 billion budget, and has nothing further in the forward estimates, yet has only achieved a small fraction of what’s needed.

The Climate Institute has done the maths on this and reported that, in fact, the ERF covers less than 5 per cent of the emission reductions needed by 2030 to be on a trajectory consistent with climate change of no more than 2°C (total emission reductions of 3750 million tonnes).

Even to reach the government’s current (inadequate) target of 26-28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, the ERF would deliver less than 12 per cent of the emissions reductions needed (1500 million tonnes).”

The Wilderness Society has also looked at the chances of the policy succeeding. They have found that of the$367 million spent on carbon pollution abatement in the recent auction, about $160 million was spent on tree projects to save the equivalent of 14.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.

“The Emissions Reduction Fund has now blown over $1.3 billion to planting and preserving trees to save 113 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, which will not even cover the expected 138Mt CO 2 e emitted into the atmosphere from just three years of clearing in Australia.”

So, not only is the policy costly and failing to achieve reductions required to meet our commitments, it is being overwhelmed by state land clearing. None of this adds up to success.

What Australia needs is much stronger policy that cuts pollution from our biggest pollution source—burning of coal, oil and gas for energy—and genuinely sets us up for a clean future.

That means replacing coal-burning generation by 2035 with clean renewable energy and getting to net zero pollution well before mid-century.

Suzanne Harter is a climate change campaigner for the Australian Conservation Foundation