Yahoo Finance Queensland 2030 climate target would be scrapped if LNP win election as state’s emissions rise
Queensland’s rising greenhouse gas emissions mean the state could miss a 2030 climate target that will be scrapped entirely if the Liberal National party wins the upcoming election, experts say.
The state accounts for 32% of Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions with a total of 171m tonnes of CO2-e in 2018, according to the latest available national data.
Tim Baxter, a senior researcher at the Climate Council, told Guardian Australia that Queensland’s emissions “are not only the largest in the country, but they are strongly trending upwards”.
Queensland’s outsized contribution to Australia’s national emissions means that any gains or losses in the sunshine state will have a big impact on the country’s future carbon footprint.
Between 2016 and 2018, Queensland’s emissions went up from 160.2m tonnes to 171.7m tonnes with analysts saying the state’s LNG industry is behind much of the growth.
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The Palaszczuk government is taking its net zero emissions target by 2050 to the state election on 31 October alongside its existing 2030 target to cut emissions from 2005 levels by 30%.
In 2005, emissions from land clearing were at 66m tonnes, and they have since dropped to 22.8m tonnes in 2018. That should make the 2030 target easier to achieve.
But Queensland-based Jason Lyddieth, the Australian Conservation Foundation’s climate change and clean energy campaigner, said even with the drops in land clearing reducing the work needed to meet the 2030 target, “it is a pretty weak target anyway for a developed country like Australia”.
“There are definitely concerns the target might not be reached,” he said.
The LNP has said it will scrap both the interim target and the net zero target by 2050 and instead align the state to the federal government’s targets.
Over the border in NSW, the Coalition government is backing a target to reach net zero emissions in that state by 2050.
The Australian government’s refusal to set a net zero emissions target by 2050 is at odds with more than 100 countries around the world. Experts have said the government’s position is also at odds with the Paris agreement.
Why are Queensland’s emissions rising?
While emissions from land clearing have dropped steeply since 2005, and agricultural emissions have remained stable, emissions from electricity generation, transport and direct burning of fossil fuels have all gone up. Fugitive emissions from mining and gas projects have also been rising.
Baxter says much of the growth in Queensland’s emissions is being driven by the state’s recent coal seam gas boom and the large amounts of energy being used by that industry to compress the gas for export at facilities near Gladstone.
Those facilities on Curtis Island, says Baxter, are the biggest users of gas in the state.
Lyddieth says the growth in emissions from the state’s gas export industry shows the folly of the Morrison government’s demands for a “gas-fired recovery” from the Covid-19 pandemic that could also lower emissions.
Lyddieth said renewable energy generation in Queensland was rising. Some 38% of homes in the state had solar panels – one of the highest rates in the world. The Palaszczuk government has also established CleanCo – a government-owned renewable energy generator.
The state government wants half the state’s electricity to come from renewables by 2030 – a target the LNP has claimed will put the state’s electricity supply at risk.
Before election campaigning officially started, the government announced it would spend $500m to buy renewable energy generation as part of the state’s recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Lyddieth says the issue of climate change and emissions reductions remains divisive.
As Guardian Australia reported, the Queensland government quietly scrapped a plan to produce a green paper that would have mapped out how the state could hit its renewable energy and climate targets.
Lyddieth said the 2019 federal election result that returned the Liberal-led coalition had “spooked” Queensland Labor which was reluctant to amplify climate change in the current campaign. Instead, Labor has said it will release a “climate action plan” if it’s re-elected.
Guardian Australia asked the Queensland environment minister, Leeanne Enoch, about the state’s rising emissions and concerns that targets would be missed. In a statement, she said the action plan would “map out our actions for meeting our 2030 targets”.
“We are already investing over $2.5bn towards actions that will help us meet our 2030 50% renewable energy target, reduce our emissions, and create thousands of jobs across our regions,” Enoch said.
The LNP has said it won’t spend taxpayer money on new coal-fired power plants and has said the state must “transition to a future beyond coal”.
David Crisafulli, the LNP environment spokesman, said in a statement to Guardian Australia the party would “mandate investment in renewable energy by government-owned energy corporations and deliver Queensland’s largest green renewable hydroelectricity generator as part of the New Bradfield Scheme”.
Asked why the LNP would scrap the 2030 target, he said: “Unlike Labor who have promised change to only go backwards, the LNP will work with the private sector, energy market institutions, households and businesses as we transition towards a sustainable energy future.”
“To increase the amount of renewable energy, the LNP will fast-track approvals for major projects, including renewable energy projects to reduce power bills and create more green jobs,” he said.
One conversation that has been off the table, Lyddieth said, was any explicit talk from either of the two major parties of ending the state’s reliance on coal for electricity. Lyddieth said the Palaszczuk government had tried to avoid the “difficult conversation” of closing coal power plants but it won’t be able to ignore the issue forever.
Prof Ian Lowe, a member of the state government’s Climate Advisory Council, said the council had told the government that Queensland had to be a part of a global effort to rapidly reduce emissions.
“At the moment we are not on that [trajectory],” he said.
“The Queensland government does not have a coherent strategy for managing the significant reduction in the use of coal-fired electricity that it needs to reach the target it has set itself.
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“As a member of the council, I have been saying the same criticism of the commonwealth government’s emissions reduction targets, which is, that it’s meaningless without a concerted plan to get there.”
He said the federal coalition, the state LNP opposition and the Palaszczuk Labor government all lacked “credible plans”.
Lowe said he despaired at the lack of attention the major parties had given to climate change during the current campaign, particularly given key sectors of the state’s economy – agriculture and tourism – were vulnerable to rising temperatures.
“It’s almost as if there’s wilful denial by the major political parties,” he said. “It’s almost as if they believe that as long as the economy is going well they can manage other problems.”
Queensland’s only Greens MP, Michael Berkman, said that as Labor had abandoned the planned green paper “they need to just own up and tell us what their plan is – because a ‘plan to make a plan’ is not good enough when we’re staring down the barrel of devastating climate collapse”.
The Greens want Queensland’s electricity to come from 100% publicly-owned renewables by 2030.
“We need a detailed, sector-by-sector plan to cut emissions to net zero, backed up with government intervention to actually make it happen, including a plan to close coal-fired power stations with a just transition for workers,” Berkman told Guardian Australia in a statement.
