Climate Change Authority split on emissions reduction requirements

The Climate Change Authority (CCA) has witnessed a surprising break in the ranks, with two members claiming that the authority’s latest report features major flaws.

It all began on 31 August, when the CCA report ‘Towards a climate policy toolkit: Special Review on Australia’s climate goals and policies’ was released. Billed as the final report in the authority’s special review on the actions that Australia should take to meet its obligations in the Paris climate agreement, the report pointed to energy efficiency as one of the quickest and cheapest ways to reduce emissions while improving productivity and creating jobs.

The report suggested government action to promote cost-effective energy efficiency improvements by households, commercial buildings and large energy users. In particular, it recommended that the government put in place a policy toolkit that uses current measures like the Emissions Reduction Fund and the safeguard mechanism, as well as new measures, in a durable solution that would allow Australia to play its part in keeping global warming below 2°C.

But two high-profile members of the authority’s board, Professors David Karoly and Clive Hamilton, came out today with a minority report stating that the original report’s recommendations were based on Australia’s 2030 emissions reduction target — a target that will be insufficient in keeping to the <2°C limit.

“Even if Australia reduces its emissions by 28% by 2030 as our current targets dictate, more than 90% of Australia’s current carbon budget will be used up by then,” Professor Karoly said.

“To meet the budget constraint, Australia’s emissions would have to decline steeply from the current 2030 target and reach net zero by 2035. This is clearly impossible and means that the majority report, by accepting the government’s targets, lacks credibility.

“Put simply, the actions recommended in the report will not put Australia on a path to playing its role in limiting global temperature rise to less than 2°C.”

The minority report thus goes several steps further than its majority counterpart, arguing for the adoption of a carbon budget — a specification of the upper limit of Australia’s total emissions between now and 2050 — as the basis of all of Australia’s climate policies. In addition, it calls for a cap-and-trade emissions trading scheme for electricity and other sectors; the closure of selected brown-coal power plants through a bidding process; an increase in the Renewable Energy Target to 65% by 2030; and the abolition of the Emissions Reduction Fund while supporting the Carbon Farming Initiative.

Several Australian scientists have come out in support of Professors Karoly and Hamilton, with Dr Paul Read, a senior research fellow at the Monash Sustainability Institute, saying the professors’ argument has been “supported by the majority of scientists for years and had to be restated yet again when the Abbott government set the 28% target leading up to the Paris agreement”.

Dr Sophie Lews, a research fellow in the Research School of Earth Sciences at The Australian National University (ANU), noted that the majority report is inconsistent with the CCA’s own report from 2014, in which the authority did indeed recommend a carbon budget through to 2050.  

“The new report rapidly blows our carbon budget,” Dr Lews said. “By accepting the current government’s targets for greenhouse gas emission cuts, it creates a crunch point for emissions reduction in 2030 that we can’t possibly achieve. The new CCA report is contradictory with the authority’s 2014 report and with Australia’s role in keeping global warming below 2°C.”

Dr Peter Tangney, a lecturer in science policy and communication at Flinders University, agreed with the minority report but concluded that the current political impasse is “unlikely to be resolved with partisan objections based on the science alone”.

“Therefore, it would be good to see them [Professors Karoly and Hamilton] place even greater emphasis on the socioeconomic potential and benefits of renewable energy generation in Australia,” he said. “This tactic would undermine the Turnbull government’s existing rhetoric by demonstrating how the goals of research, innovation, jobs and growth can be achieved sustainably, rather than based on a business-a-usual approach.”