Tuesday, 31 March 2026
Wednesday, 26 November 2025
Government projected to badly miss 2035 climate target, fall shy of 2030 (27th November 2025)
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-27/climate-target-2035-badly-miss-projection/106059034
Australia is projected to fall just shy of its 2030 climate target and badly miss its 2035 target without significant changes, the climate change minister has revealed.
Delivering an annual climate statement to parliament, Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen said it was normal "for there to be a gap between projected emissions and a target 10 years in the future".
"As new policies are developed and implemented, the emissions outlook improves. That's what a target is for — to drive new initiatives and work," Mr Bowen said.
The Environment Department says Australia is on track to reach a 42 per cent reduction in emissions by the end of this decade, 1 per cent short of the legislated target.
But the department has warned in its annual statement that the country is far further behind on meeting the government's recently decided commitment to cut emissions by 62 to 70 per cent by 2035.
It says on current projections, emissions will fall by just 48 per cent instead.
While the government will fall short of its headline 2030 goal, it is still expected to meet its international obligations for this decade, as it will remain within the cumulative carbon emissions budget set under the Paris Agreement.
Chris Bowen has delivered the annual climate statement from the Climate Change Authority. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)
Thursday, 18 September 2025
Australia's 2035 climate targets on path to net zero judged by the experts - 18th Sept 2025
Australia's 2035 climate targets on path to net zero judged by the experts
After much anticipation, Australia has set its new climate targets: a reduction of 62 to 70 per cent within the next 10 years.
Climate groups have already criticised the targets as "timid, weak, and a failure".
Under the Paris Agreement, countries have to submit increasingly ambitious targets every five years with the goal of keeping warming below 1.5 degrees.
The United Kingdom's target is 81 per cent by 2035 from 1990 levels.
Professor Frank Jotzo, head of the Centre for Climate and Energy Policy at ANU, is more focused on the policy settings and regulations the Australian Government will need to apply to bring emissions down.
"A target in the 60 per cent range… is not a disappointment in terms of lack of ambition," he said. (re Australia)
"Achieving 65 per cent emission reduction by 2035 would mean halving emissions levels between now, 2025, and 2035.
"So that would be an enormous transformation of aspects of Australia's greenhouse gas-emitting sectors."
Even at 62 per cent, the floor of the newly-announced targets, Australia will need to work much harder because most of our emissions reductions so far have come from changes in the natural world, as opposed to cutting back on fossil fuels.
Between 2005 and March 2025, Australia's emissions decreased by 28 percent.
However, when you remove the land use sector, emissions have only dipped by a small 4 per cent.
How much do Australia's actions matter?
There will also be much conversation about whether Australia can have a tangible impact on the world's progress towards net zero.
Australia accounts for around 1 per cent of global emissions, but is also one of the world's top fossil fuel exporters. When those emissions are quantified, it rises to 4 per cent.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen hand down a 2035 target more ambitious than Australia's Canadian or New Zealand allies, but below the United Kingdom's, which is one of the most ambitious in the world.
The next major climate commitment, one of the most significant decisions Labor will make this term, will strike a middle path between like-minded nations.
It is expected to be committed in a meeting of cabinet today, before being taken to New York next week, where other world leaders will also gather to confirm their 2035 targets at a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly.
The commitment follows the release of the first National Climate Risk Assessment on Monday.
That report warned 1.5 million people could be affected by sea levels rising by 2050, an increase in heat deaths and frequent flooding in major cities if global warming rises above 2 degrees Celsius.
Monday, 15 September 2025
Australia's emission targets as of March 2025
The current legislated interim target is 43 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 (on the way to net zero by 2050).
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-15/albanese-government-2035-climate-emissions-target/105771566
In the year to March this year 2025, Australia's emissions totalled 440 million tonnes — 28 per cent less than in 2005.
On the current trajectory, emissions will be about 36 per cent lower than 2005 by 2030, 43 per cent lower by 2035, and 86 per cent lower by 2050 (not 100 per cent as legislated).
The Climate Change Authority (CCA) in its draft consultation, in which it decreed that 65-75 per cent below 2005 levels was achievable.
At the risk of over-simplifying and pre-empting the CCA's sophisticated, detailed modelling: 65 per cent or less means no carbon tax, 75 per cent or more means carbon tax.
First, Australia's wealth rests to a large extent on fossil fuel exports and the government keeps approving new fossil fuel projects, including last Friday's approval of Woodside's massive North West Shelf gas project.
And second,
many farmers are very unhappy about new transmission lines and wind turbines going on or near their land, which are needed because wind and solar farms are not going where the old coal-fired power stations are.
The approval for the Woodside project is conditional on the North West Shelf operations becoming net zero by 2050, which will mean a huge extra demand for carbon offsets, or Australian Carbon Credit Units.
In fact, if the government announces an ambitious 2035 target this week while maintaining and expanding the nation's fossil fuel infrastructure, the only way there will be enough offsets to achieve it will be if there's also a carbon tax to pay for them.
Economist Ross Garnaut and public policy expert Rod Sims, founders of renewable energy think tank The Superpower Institute, have suggested that a carbon tax be applied to exports as well as domestic use, but Friday's approval of the Woodside project makes it clear that won't happen.
As for the full electrification of the electricity grid needed to achieve net zero by 2050, it will likely either have to be done despite protesting farmers, or through the near-universal adoption of household and business rooftop solar with batteries … or with nuclear power.
Sunday, 1 June 2025
Bowen open to carbon tariff, says Australia must 'do more' to hit 2030 climate target but remains on track - 1st June 2025
INSIDERS INTERVIEW WITH ENERGY MINISTER CHRIS BOWN
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-01/bowen-open-to-carbon-tariff/105362978
In short:
Energy Minister Chris Bowen says Australia is "by and large" on track to hit its 2030 emissions goal but concedes the need to "do more", leaving the door open to a carbon tariff on cement and other products pending an expert review.
Mr Bowen said the newly approved North West Shelf expansion would not jeopardise emissions goals because the site was covered by the safeguard mechanism and legally required to ratchet down its own emissions toward net zero.
What's next?
The government will soon decide its 2035 target, subject to the advice of the independent Climate Change Authority, and is bidding to host the next global climate conference.
Mr Bowen said Australia was "by and large on track" to meet its legislated target of reducing emissions by 43 per cent by 2030, despite new figures this week showing flatlining progress in 2024.
Labor approved a 40-year expanded licence to Australia's largest oil and gas project, Western Australia's North West Shelf, in a move criticised by environmental groups.
Mr Bowen said the decision by Environment Minister Murray Watt was made according to the "very strict criteria of the environmental approvals legislation", which does not allow consideration of emissions impacts and which Labor has so far failed to reform.
Friday, 30 May 2025
Australia just approved Woodside's gas project until 2070. How could it happen? 31st May 2025
The Australian government's decision to increase gas mining in WA for the next 45 years did not consider cultural and environmental impact, global warming and climate change.
"Suddenly, a project which is now allowed to go ahead until 2070, it's going to ring alarm bells in a very, very, very big way."
Some weeks more than others, climate change really bears down on Australians.
This week, the news carried images of eerie orange skies as dust storms whipped across landscapes dried from record-breaking droughts. Further north, homes were submerged in floods exacerbated by heavier rain from a warmer climate.
And also this week, the Australian government approved the extension of one of the world's largest gas facilities until 2070.
But this decision isn't about climate change.
At least not under Australia's current laws, where the climate harm from fossil fuel projects doesn't have to be considered.
How can Australia approve a fossil fuel mega-project that will run until 20 years after the world is meant to reach net zero emissions?
"I think the average punter out there is basically saying, 'Hang on, this is about climate change and 2070, what are we doing? What in the hell are we doing?'" lamented Greg Bourne from the Climate Council.
The North West Shelf is already Australia's third-highest emitting facility in the country, producing about 6 million tonnes of greenhouse gas each year.
That's just the direct emissions from extracting and processing the gas and doesn't count emissions after the gas is sold, shipped, and burnt at its final destination.
Some estimates put the total lifetime emissions from this project at the equivalent of a decade of Australia's current emissions.
A decade. Think of it as pushing out Australia's climate goals by another 10 years.
It's not just climate experts warning that the world needs to stop expanding fossil fuels: the International Energy Agency says there is enough existing coal, oil, and gas projects to supply the world and stay the course to net zero.
"The world is awash in gas, primarily coming out from the Middle East, but lots coming out from America and so on like that. I think our Australian companies fool themselves into thinking that they're going to be the last company standing, pushing gas out there,"
"Climate change is one of the most significant challenges facing the global community and one of the greatest threats to Australia's way of life.
"It is time to act. It is time for procrastination to end … We cannot any longer afford to be complacent on this issue."
Woodside's North West Shelf approval just a stepping stone to enable Browse project - 27th May 2025
When all the hype and the fury is stripped away, the
decision to extend the life of the gigantic North West Shelf gas plant boils
down to one thing.
"It's really all about Browse," says RISC Advisory
boss Martin Wilkes in relation to the huge gas field off the Kimberley coast of
Western Australia.
Browse is one of the country's biggest untapped resources
projects, with gas reserves large enough to meet the equivalent of Australia's
entire domestic demand for almost 20 years.
To the Western Australian government and the state's
industry, it represents energy security, jobs and billions of dollars of
investment.
And for some of the world's biggest oil and gas companies —
not to mention Australia's flag-bearer, Woodside — Browse presents as the last
great hurrah for the country's gas export industry.
Browse is likely to be the mother-of-all environmental fights — a pivotal clash between those seeking an end to new fossil fuel mega-project and those in the opposite corner.
By piping Browse gas 900 kilometres south and processing it through the North West Shelf, he says Woodside would avoid the need for a new LNG plant that would come at huge cost.
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