This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The challenge the Morrison government faces in meeting future climate targets without new policies is underlined by an analysis that breaks down how significantly greenhouse gas emissions are increasing from transport, natural gas and coalmining.

Since 2005, the year against which the government has chosen to benchmark its Paris target, Australia’s emissions from transport are up 23%.

Pollution from burning fossil fuels – mainly natural gas, but also coal – in manufacturing, construction and domestic heating has risen 30%. “Fugitive” emissions released during liquefied natural gas (LNG) processing and coalmining have jumped 55%.

Other parts of the economy are getting cleaner – emissions from electricity generation, which is still the biggest chunk of national emissions at about a third, are down 10%. There have been smaller cuts from agriculture, waste and industrial processes.

But the analysis of government data by Hugh Saddler, an energy consultant and ANU honorary associate professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy, suggests Australia cannot meet the target it set at the Paris climate summit without policies to address where emissions are rising substantially.

He said at the moment the government does not have any.

“They absolutely don’t have any policy to stop emissions rising from transport and in the other areas such as LNG and coal exports the policy is to actually encourage them to grow – the government would like to think they would keep going up and up,” Saddler said.

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The data is contained in Saddler’s latest national emissions audit, which is published by progressive research group the Australia Institute.

Australia’s total emissions are now estimated to be 12.7% less than they were in 2005. They have increased each year since 2015, when they were 14.5% below the benchmark year. The Coalition’s target is a 26-28% cut by 2030.

Saddler said it showed why the Morrison government was pushing hard to use what are known as carryover credits to meet its Paris target. The credits represent the amount Australia expects to finish ahead of its 2020 target under the previous climate deal, the Kyoto Protocol.

Several countries – notably members of the Association of Small Island States such as Tuvalu – challenged Australia at United Nations climate talks in Bonn, Germany last week over its plan to use carryover credits. The European Union and New Zealand are among others opposed to their use.

Opponents say using carryover credits would effectively reduce Australia’s 2030 target to a 16% cut.

They say carryover credits are merely a reflection that Australia set easy-to-meet targets under the Kyoto Protocol – a pollution increase between 1990 and 2010, then a 5% cut between 2000 and 2020 – and that all countries will need to drop accounting tricks and make much deeper cuts if the world is to limit global heating to as close to 1.5C as possible.

Richie Merzian, the Australia Institute’s climate and energy program director, said using carryover credits was the most egregious example of the Coalition government’s contempt for the international climate system. “Australia is isolated as the only OECD country pushing to exploit this loophole,” he said.

A recent policy brief by the Investor Group on Climate Change says carryover credits were included in the initial Kyoto deal as an incentive for ambitious countries to go beyond their formal targets. In reality, it has just rewarded countries that set weak targets, such as Australia and Russia.

It is still unclear how carryover credits will be treated under the Paris deal. Countries are expected to explain how they will meet their targets and – unless there is a unanimous agreement to ban carryover credits – they could technically just include them. But they would be likely to face increasing criticism.

The Paris agreement also says countries will become more ambitious over time and that their commitments will reflect their “highest possible ambition”. Opponents say carryover credits do not fit this definition as they transparently weaken a target.

When asked about carryover credits, the government says Australia has made “responsible, achievable and balanced commitments” to reduce emissions and has a strong track record in meeting and beating its targets.

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The minister for emissions reduction, Angus Taylor, has also argued that the growth in emissions from Australia’s rapidly expanding LNG industry should be seen as a positive as the gas would be reducing the amount of coal burned in Asia. The Saddler report suggests this makes little sense given the government is also supporting a significant expansion of coalmining in Queensland.

Saddler said there was a possibility that emissions could be reduced where they are currently growing through state government and city-based policies and changes in technology and on international markets. He gives the example of electric vehicles, which are expected to be cost competitive with petrol cars by 2025.

“One of the things we can hope for is that technological change comes along in the absence of any government policy,” he said.

A government policy document released before the election estimated by 2030 about 100m tonnes of emissions reduction would come from unspecified “technology improvements and other sources of abatement”.

Other trends in the report include: