“Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions dropped last year to levels not seen in more than 30 years due mostly to the coronavirus pandemic that put a handbrake on fossil fuel burning in the transport sector and slowed economic activity.”
This sounds fantastic until the uncomfortable truth arises that most of this was directly due to the pandemic and not very structural (except for some good renewables development). Things were already going pear-shaped again by the end of 2020:
“In the final quarter of 2020, transport emissions – which includes road and rail movement as well as domestic air travel – rose by 11% on the previous three months, reflecting the easing of lockdown restrictions and increases in domestic air travel.”
And:
“But the energy department data says long-term trends for other high-emitting sectors are heading in the wrong direction.
“Since 1990, the department data shows the annual energy used mainly to produce goods in heavy industry has risen 52% and transport emissions have gone up 43%.
“The department said there was also likely to be a growth in emissions from agriculture in coming quarters as sheep and cattle stocks increased following an easing of drought conditions and crop production went up.”
One of the least intelligence things you can do with emissions in Australia is:
“Australia’s globally significant LNG export industry was increasing the emissions in the stationary energy sector. Burning gas in order to provide the energy needed to compress it into LNG for export was “putting a big kick up on Australia’s stationery energy emissions”, said Saddler.”
Burning gas to compress gas! Double trouble!
Another elephant in the room is that all of these calculations don’t even take into account emissions from Australia’s apocalyptic wildfires in the 2019-20 season.
Remember this?
Matthew Abbott / The New York Times via Redux Pictures
Those bushfires released more Co2 than Australia does in a year.
So this is all marketing BS basically, coming from the Australian Government as it tries to keep a straight face as it jogs away from the flames.
Perhaps the Australian Green Party’s leader sums up Scott Morrison and his government best:
“The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, said Taylor’s “crowing about emissions reductions” relied on “a renewables transition he’s trying to slow, a Covid-related transport shift that he cannot prolong and a coal production drop that he’s trying to reverse
The Australian government is so far up the bum of the Australian fossil fuel industry, not much is going to change until Australians decide they’ve seen enough photos of charred Koalas. Clearly this point has not yet been reached.