Responding to Stagnant GHG emissions

Australia’s annual greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory report for Q1 2019 has just been released. The nation’s emissions were about the same as the prior quarter and pretty much any quarter since about 2012. As discussed in an earlier blog (1), this stagnant performance is not a great look and typically elicits a government attempt to cast it in the best possible light.

This time around the Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor claims the annual emissions data would have showed a slight decrease rather than a slight increase if it not for emissions associated with increased gas exports. The Minister is trying to make the argument that Australia’s natural gas exports help reduce emissions in other countries by encouraging coal to gas switching. Presumably he wants listeners to give him some notional carbon brownie points and to take the focus off his lack of progress on decarbonisation .

While the government’s logic on coal to gas switching is not as unfounded as some uncharitable commentators have claimed, he knows full well that he is trying to defend an emissions profile that is not moving down in a meaningful fashion. He should also know that his arguments will do little to ease what I believe is growing climate dissatisfaction among some key groups of Liberal voters.

Despite victory at the last election and a strong performance in coal sensitive electorates, the vote in many traditional liberal electorates was notably down. My contention is that lack of action on energy policy is a key reason that “rusted on” liberals registered protest votes. The most striking example was Warringah which opted to not re-elect the very sceptical Tony Abbot. This was not an isolated outcome, the Liberal primary vote in the blue ribbon seat of Kooyong as below 50% for the first time since the 1972 election and the Greens are now in clear second spot. The coalition might have won the coal fields but is losing the support of wealthy Australians who they need to both reliably vote for their candidates and provide financial support.

The relentless messaging on the impact of climate change, a non existent energy policy and dismal GHG reduction performance relative to international peers is resonating in Liberal heartland. Aging and wealthy baby boomers are worried about their legacy and the welfare of their grandchildren. More broadly Australians are not culturally prepared to be treated as international decarbonisation pariahs, unwilling to “do our part” in a genuine global initiative.

So if the Morrison government comes to the conclusion that it has to actually do something, what would a strawman for a credible centre right response to climate and decarbonisation look like?

It should start by portraying decarbonisation as neither a false narrative from the left or a symptom of decaying capitalism, but as an important but manageable issue which can be dealt with by sound government. In shifting to a pragmatic climate position, the coalition has the opportunity to ask the electorate who they trust to transform the Australian economy? A party claiming to seek practical, low cost, minimum impact solutions or ideologues who won’t resist treating decarbonisation like a Christmas tree, adding to it every shiny symbolic program they can think of.

Locking down support in critical coal centric electorates will be important. These communities have shown they won’t vote for their own economic destruction by electing ALP or Green candidates but they need a reason to reject One Nation. The coalition needs to be able to offer them something meaningful without alienating others who are expecting real action on GHG emissions. The logical position is a coal/gas policy that offers unequivocally support for fossil fuel exports while acknowledging that these exports will decline and potentially cease as the world transitions to renewables. The pitch to the coal miners is that Australia won’t dictate energy policy or withhold necessary raw materials from nations who import our fossil fuels – in other words exports are safe for as long as customer demand exists. At a more granular level references to indispensability of metallurgical coal to steel making and the value of high calorific Australian thermal coal will appeal to technocrats.

Assuming this mollifies the miners, a credible climate stance needs to commit to the Paris agreement with a plan and a timetable to be at net zero emissions before about 2075. This is a slower rate than more ambitious nations and wont keep the more zealous happy but it should suffice for the majority. The plan needs to focus on three outcomes – getting lots of renewable built and managing the decline in domestic coal usage, incentivising more electric vehicles and planting more trees than we cut down. The detail behind these three elements can (and should) have some clear caveats and off ramps. The climate zealots can have non negotiable hard targets, but the pragmatic approach recognises that transformation is complex so a realistic plan can incorporate flexibility to deal with new insights, both helpful and challenging.

Even if our plan is modest overall in comparison with other nations, Australians will expect to be among the world leaders in something. The obvious area is probably solar – we are already in the top couple of nations based on a per capita solar generation. This probably drives R&D funding for battery storage which given our Lithium mining industry can be sold under the guise of nation building.

With solar leadership the flagship of our grid decarbonisation agenda, along with Snowy 2.0 if that still makes sense, rolling out electric vehicles can take a bit of back seat. Rhetoric highlighting the complexity of EV’s for a vast and underpopulated country like Australia means we can congratulate tiny Denmark on their wonderful achievements in this area and promise to follow suite when the technology is suitable for travel across the Nullabor and between remote NT communities. Presumably the ACT and progressive inner city local councils will push EV friendly policies which can be praised but not necessarily emulated.

Land use policies may prove to be the toughest to get right, however this is one area where Australia has actually made some progress albeit mostly by selecting the right starting point for abatement measurements. A collaborative program with New Zealand to work on reducing emissions from sheep and cattle has to be applauded. Reforestation and afforestation offers a pathway to give money to rural communities which will keep the National Party happy. It is also a mechanism to compensate graziers whose sheep and cattle face declining demand.

Clearly the strawman will need a lot more detail added but the general thrust is that a minimalistic climate policy will be about consistently saying the right things, getting enough progress in a few chosen areas for national GHG emissions to actually trend down while committing to studies and running trials for topics that look too tough. This is more than a little cynical but it won’t be too far off what many other nations will end up doing. The alternative is to take on a truly transformative platform and find out if this can be done without the fundamental systemic changes envisaged by the authors of the New Green Deal (2). Scott Morrison should be ok leaving this to Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn