Recommendation
To prevent a runaway climate breakdown, no new coal, oil and gas projects can proceed and a climate trigger should be legislated by the Parliament.
In the short 27 days between the passage of the Climate Change Bill 2022 through the House of Representatives, and the reporting of this bill by the Senate:
(a)
The Federal Minister for Resources, the Hon Madeleine King MP, released 10 new oil and gas leases covering 46 758 square kilometres of our oceans to be exploited. She subsequently deflected global warming concerns by saying ‘It’s the bubbles in your soda water or out of your SodaStream, so you know, we’ve got to keep it in balance, how we think about carbon dioxide’.
(b)
The Federal Minister for the Environment, the Hon Tania Plibersek MP, refused to halt the development of a gas-powered fertiliser plant in the Burrup Peninsula, which itself is a sacred place. This project will cause chemical reactions to erode the adjacent rock art created by Murujuga ancestors 40 000 years ago.
(c)
The Queensland Labor government gave environmental approval to the Acland thermal coal mine on prime agricultural land;
(d)
Australia’s biggest resources company, BHP, which has claimed it is committed to net zero filed an application for a new coal mine expansion that will operate until the year 2113.
The modelling by RepuTex of the Labor party’s policies that will lead to the 43 per cent reduction enshrined in this bill did not factor in any new coal or gas developments. Furthermore as evidence provided to the committee by the Department of Climate Change, the Energy, Environment and Water, they have not attempted to remodel or verify RepuTex’s modelling.
Senator HANSON-YOUNG: Of course, we know the 43 per cent target was arrived at through the consulting firm RepuTex when Labor were in opposition rather than in government. I'm interested in what work your department is doing. Has it been replicated? Has it been stress tested? Has it simply been taken from an opposition party and then implemented in government?
Ms Evans: For the purposes of this bill, the case of that modelling was completed by RepuTex while the government were in opposition. That's the modelling that has been used for the basis of this target.
Senator HANSON-YOUNG: Is there any plan for the department, under the guise of being the government department, to remodel or work out how we're going to get to 43 per cent?
Ms Evans: …That capacity building effort is already underway, and we will certainly be very closely working with the Treasury to enable that modelling effort to be brought to bear in the future.
In the absence of any existing Departmental modelling of the Labor party’s election promises showing the impact of new coal and gas projects proceeding, the achievement of the 43 per cent target legislated by this Bill will be undone by any one of the 114 new coal or gas developments currently in the major projects pipeline managed by the Department of Resources.
Expert evidence provided to the committee on notice Professor Nerilie Abram, Professor of Climate Science at the Australian National University, explained just how significant these unaccounted emissions would be to achieve any kind of emissions goals:
Extractions of gas from a new Beetaloo sub-basin shale gas field would result in annual emissions that equate to a 6.3% to 11.3% increase on Australia’s 2020 greenhouse gas emissions of 499 million tonnes
CO2-equivalent.
Allowing the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo gas basin to be opened up would require an implausible number of emissions offsets and push further requirements onto other parts of the economy.
The International Energy Agency made it clear that to reach 1.5 degrees of warming, or even the government’s own target of net zero by 2050, not one coal, oil or gas project can proceed.
To ensure new emissions intensive projects do not blow Australia’s remaining and rapidly diminishing carbon budget, a climate trigger should be placed on all projects in development so that the Environment Minister can assess such projects against the government’s emissions targets and rapidly diminishing carbon budget that the current target will lead to.
Recommendation
Before the next global climate summit, the Australian Government should lift national targets to 75 per cent by 2030 and net zero by 2035 to align with 1.5 degrees of warming.
Recommendation
The Australian Government should sign up to the Global Methane Pledge and join the Powering Past Coal Alliance before the next global climate summit.
The government’s targets are based on political science, not climate science. The 43 per cent reduction target has us on track for a world of more than 2 degrees of warming and these targets are not compliant with the Paris Agreement.
The targets enshrined in the bill of 43 per cent reductions below 2005 levels by 2030 and net zero by 2050 are set well above either 1.5 degrees of warming, or even the more-extreme and risky 2 degree limit.
Every increased fraction of a degree caused by extracting and burning coal, oil and gas will cause further and compounding damage to every aspect of human and biophysical survival. The horrifying bushfires of 2019-20 and the destructive flooding of 2021-22 happened with just 1.1 degrees of warming.
As Australia’s former Chief Scientist, Professor Penny Sackett, told the committee:
What may seem like a small degree of warming actually has huge consequences for the earth. This is because it takes a tremendous amount of energy to cause a small degree of warming. That energy then feeds back through the earth's systems, which are all connected.
Professor Nerilie Abram added:
I would agree with what Penny has said, particularly emphasising that every fraction of a degree of additional warming increases the impacts we will see from climate change.
There are some very good scientific reasons why we would want to limit warming to preferably 1.5 degrees but definitely well below two degrees.
One of the really key factors for those targets we have for limiting to 1.5 degrees is not only extreme events becoming more frequent and more intense but also that, with every fraction of a degree of warming, we increase the chances of passing irreversible tipping points in the climate system.
We may not know exactly where those tipping points lie but there are some of them that have consequences for Australia and our neighbours.
Beyond 1.5 degrees we are at risk of widespread loss of our coral reefs, with more than 90 per cent of those lost, and essentially all the reefs lost as we know them today by two degrees of warming. Between 1.5 and two degrees we also risk irreversible losses of the West Antarctic ice sheet. Beyond two degrees of warming we then start to trigger similar instabilities in East Antarctica as well, and those have consequences for how quickly and how much sea level will rise not only along our coasts but also for some of our Pacific neighbours who are on very low-lying land.
In the absence of a functional Climate Change Authority for the last decade to update their 2014 Targets and Progress Review, replicating that methodology was left to an independent Climate Targets Panel of eminent scientists who summarised their conclusions in three main points:
1. To be consistent with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to well below 2°C, Australia’s 2030 emissions reduction target must be 50% below 2005 levels. A 2035 target would need to be 67% below 2005 levels. Net-zero emissions would need to be reached by 2045.
2. To be consistent with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, Australia’s 2030 emissions reduction target must be 74% below 2005 levels, with net-zero emissions reached by 2035.
3. A simple ‘net-zero emissions by 2050’ target for Australia is not sufficient for the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to well below 2°C (nor 1.5°C).
While we recognise the legislation and the Greens amendments to the bill would ensure that the Climate Change Authority will have reference to these temperature goals with a view to replicate the 2014 Targets and Progress Report, the current targets adopted in the bill do not only sideline science, but they also make the target harder to achieve and compress the time in which the hard work has to be done.
Again, as Professor Abram advised the committee:
We're currently having an emission reduction target of 43 per cent by 2030. What that does is that it brings those other years forward and increases the ambition [that has to be done later], so we'd have to be at net zero before 2045, and those other targets would move forward as well. So we've spent the carbon faster this decade, and it means that we have to transition faster after 2030.
Those are the numbers for limiting warming to two degrees. That's not 'well below two degrees', which is what's actually stated in the Paris Agreement, and it's not 1.5 degrees. So, if we wanted to be on that trajectory for limiting warming to 1.5 degrees, we'd have to be talking about emission reductions in Australia of around 74 per cent by 2030.
The current 2030 target in the legislation scientifically requires the
2050 net zero target to be brought forward to before 2045, just to reach 2 degrees and all the risks of losing control of climatic chain reactions that involves. This pathway is of course nowhere near stabilising temperatures at 1.5 degrees that the climate science requires to eliminate risk of climatic breakdown.
To avoid a risky, delayed and disruptive transition, the Australian Greens will move amendments to align the bill with science by requiring a 75 per cent reduction by 2030 and net zero by 2035.
Recommendation
That the 47th Parliament should implement a statutory authority to support coal and gas communities during the transition.
As Australia slowly moves away from coal and gas, our trading partners–and customers for coal and gas–are doing so at a much greater pace. This direction that the global economy is heading in demands that the Parliament and government are preparing and supporting local coal and gas communities to transition and thrive in a net zero world.
This was the main point that Mr Ben Moxham from the Australian Council of Trade Unions made to the committee, which is worth quoting at length:
The 'how' for us is so important—that it's a just transition for working people. Over the past decade, for example, we've had 12 coal-fired power stations close. In most cases those workers have been left with little notice and little support. Our largest coal-fired power station is due to close in three very, very short years, so we urgently need a planned energy transition that supports affected workers and their communities, in particular in regional Australia.
The bill could have played a stronger role in addressing this. Having the Climate Change Authority consider whether or not a just transition is taking place when performing its functions under the bill, along with the work of the other 15 statutory authorities that the bill refers to, would have been very, very helpful, and we do see this as a missed opportunity. But we also acknowledge that this is not a substitute for the national plan we need on a just transition—one that we need urgently.
We need an energy transition authority. I'm very pleased to jump in on the back of the BCA's remarks—they also supported this. This is something that has wide support across community. The authority would be tasked with making sure that workers and their communities affected by closures are given the support they need. Practically, that's redeployment schemes, skills and training and other supports so affected workers can get secure jobs and fair pay and conditions. It's planning and investment to help create new job opportunities in emerging renewable energy industries, especially in those very regions that are undergoing transition and that have powered this country for so long, as the BCA also commented.
But we also need to make sure that these new jobs are secure ones that are fairly paid—that they're genuinely replacing the ones that may be lost. This requires long planning horizons; it involves serious coordination and investment across all levels of government, industry and unions; and it must involve, critically, those local communities and workers, especially in regional Australia.
The Greens also acknowledge that the bill could have played a more prominent role in dealing with this crucial issue, however it should not be characterised as a missed opportunity, because the negotiations over this bill enabled the opportunity for this important work to commence.
As part of concluding negotiations on this Bill, the government committed to consider Greens proposals to support coal and gas workers and their communities, including the establishment of a Transition Authority.
An energy transition authority has strong overlap between the Labor and Greens parties. The Greens took a costed policy to the election that would establish transition authorities and empower local communities. While the Labor party did not take a policy to the election, their policy platform states ‘Labor will establish a statutory authority charged with mitigating the adverse impacts of coal power station closures on regional workforces and communities as a priority’.
On 29th August, the Greens announced their intention to introduce legislation to establish an authority to support coal and gas workers and ensure that future climate scare campaigns from the Coalition fall on deaf ears, because communities will know their future is being planned for and their children will have a secure future.
This should be a priority area for the government to work with the Greens to legislate in this term of Parliament.
Recommendation
That the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000 be amended to ensure that native forests cannot be burned as a ‘renewable’ energy source.
As set out by multiple submissions and witnesses to the Committee, the Climate Change (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2022 which amends the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000 presents an opportunity to reverse an Abbott-era change that was opposed by both the Australian Greens and the Australian Labor Party. This change allowed for native forest biomass to be burned as a ‘renewable’ source of energy, and so eligible for power generators using biomass to claim renewable energy certificates for their use.
At the time of debate on reducing the Renewable Energy Target in 2015, the then-Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, the Hon Anthony Albanese MP, outlined concerns with the proposed classification of native forest biomass as renewable energy in his speech:
They [the Abbott Government] also proposed another last-minute change, which was to insert into the proposal the idea that native wood waste should be included in the scheme. We do not support this last-minute thought bubble based upon ideology rather than common sense.
Native wood waste is neither clean nor renewable. The way the government have worded it makes it sound like it would just be the little offcuts which would be burnt, but the fact is that nothing is further from the truth. The definition of native wood waste under their proposal is the whole of any tree that is harvested and not ultimately saw-lopped. So, if you cut down a whole lot of trees but decide not to saw-lop them or to saw-lop only some of them, you can still burn the whole tree. That is the proposition before us today, and we are simply not willing to see the renewable energy scheme used to provide an alternative to the hard work being done by all those who have negotiated the Tasmanian forestry agreement, which focuses on employment, value adding and making sure that that resource contributes the maximum benefit to the economy, rather than this opportunistic, last-minute inclusion that the government have attempted.
We believe the renewable energy target is too important, in terms of its practical survival, to not listen to the Clean Energy Council and others in the environmental movement who have urged us to have a pragmatic approach to ensure that the industry can continue, whilst committing to further change to improve the scheme, should we come into government.
Unfortunately, the amendment was not successful and the current regulation remains in place. This regulation financially encourages the chopping and burning of native forests, further decimating at-risk habitats for many threatened and endangered species that are also fighting the pervasive threats caused by global heating.
As the Australian Conservation Foundation noted:
Forest burning burns the lungs of our land and there is no need for it because Australia has some of the best solar and wind resources in the world. Our renewable energy goals can be more than met by wind and solar, which are genuinely renewable energy sources. Classifying biomass as ‘renewable energy’ allows it to take assistance from the real renewable energy industry – including new, large-scale wind and solar PV plants, and green hydrogen made via electrolysis—while also harming ecosystems and emitting greenhouse gases as further outlined below.
Similarly, Wilderness Australia set out in their submission:
A key threat to the credibility of the government’s target is an amendment made by the Abbott government to the Renewable Energy Act 2000 that removed the Gillard government’s exclusion of native forest biomass as a source of renewable energy.
The result has been an increasing number of proposals to use native forest biomass as a replacement for coal or use it to co-fire with coal in the name of clean and renewable energy – a claim that fails even the most basic common sense test given that any forest older than 30 years cannot recover from logging before 2050, and that generating energy from native forest biomass results in more GHG emissions per unit of energy than coal.
Further, the North East Forest Alliance also outlined in their submission:
Creating a market for burning native forests for electricity will increase logging intensity and log removal, and the rapid release of carbon from coarse woody debris that would otherwise be left in the forest to slowly decompose over decades. The Commonwealth must not allow a biomass industry to compound the impacts of export woodchipping …
We ask that the Commonwealth now amend the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000, and any other relevant instruments, to prohibit ‘wood obtained from native forests’ being eligible for Renewable Energy Certificates, particularly large-scale generation certificates (LGCs).
The Wilderness Society also outlined in their evidence to the Committee:
We also, furthermore, believe that a safeguard against native forest biomass being accounted for as renewable energy, that Labor once successfully embedded in law in 2011 and sought to get in 2015, should be brought back.
The Bob Brown Foundation also provided a clear recommendation to the committee:
Restore the ban on biomass energy, generated from burning native forest wood products, being regarded as eligible renewable energy in any Government legislation, including the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000, and any other regulation or programme as was the case in the Clean Energy Package 2011. Burning wood is more polluting than burning coal. It also drives logging of forests and destruction of biodiversity as well as increasing bushfire risk.
A significant number of other submissions raised the issue of biomass burning. The Australian Greens thank all those who have provided evidence on this important issue, and have come to the conclusion that there are no technical barriers to preventing the identical amendments moved by the Labor Opposition in 2015 to be adopted by the Senate. This would ensure the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000 prevents any executive government again reinserting a regulation that would encourage the destruction of native forests for biomass energy.
Recommendation
Recommendation
Noting the significant changes to the legislation secured by the Greens and subject to the above recommendations, importantly the immediate lifting of Australia’s climate targets, the Senate should pass the Climate Change Bills.
Notwithstanding the above comments, it is the view of the Australian Greens that this bill be supported and the targets lifted to align with science as a first step in repairing the destruction from the last decade of the Coalition government.
We acknowledge the good faith negotiations that occurred resulting in the Greens and crossbench successfully moving amendments on the floor of the House of Representatives. We also acknowledge the government rewriting their original legislation before its introduction to meet some of the original concerns of the Australian Greens.
Importantly, the modified bill ensured that 43 per cent was a legal floor and could go no further backwards. The updated bill also ensured the executive government could not reduce the target that is legislated, and any future executive government is prevented from reducing any target subsequently committed to the United Nations as a nationally determined contribution.
The important work of the Parliament now commences to write the laws that will stop new coal and gas projects and drive emissions reductions right across the economy so that our national policies are aligned with what the science demands.
A first, important symbol of increased ambition should be Australia’s signing of the Global Methane Pledge which would commit Australia to reduce this potent heat trapping gas by 30 per cent by 2030. This would set the foundations for a higher nationally determined contribution to be set in this term of Parliament.
There is very little time to waste and so much at stake, which is why our additional comments conclude with the testimony of Professor Penny Sackett:
I note that the laws of physics are non-negotiable. Climate change is devastating and it will get worse, but this legislature can craft tools, including these bills, that will help limit just how much worse. Steep greenhouse gas reductions in this decade are the single most important driver of whether global warming can be held to well below two degrees Celsius.
This legislature can, and must craft the tools we need to limit how much worse the climate crisis will get. The easy part of legislating a target will soon be complete and now the important work of passing the actual laws necessary to achieve far more this decade than the 43 per cent legislated target begins.
Senator Sarah Hanson-Young
Deputy Chair