Its power transition is fading, its energy transition is fiction, net zero is fantasy – and politicians’ transition to reality has begun.
The mainstream media’s coverage of “climate and energy policy” (the Albanese government has yoked the latter to the former) is grossly unbalanced. Whether it’s The Australian or Guardian Australia, reports are slanted overwhelmingly towards governments’ aspirations (“emissions targets”) for the future. Accordingly, they almost completely ignore past, present and plausible future reality – that is, the actions of energy producers and consumers.
In particular, journalists, investors and others rarely ask – and never investigate – crucial questions such as: “how realistic, in light of past and present levels and trends of carbon dioxide and other emissions, as well as future demographic and other developments, are governments’ targets?”
This article, which extends and elaborates “Net Zero” Isn’t a Megatrend – It’s a Mega-trap (8 April), addresses this omission. In particular, I establish three crucial points. First, Australia’s electricity transition is fading and its energy transition is at best glacial and mostly fiction. According to the 2024 edition of the Statistical Review of World Energy, released on 20 June, hydrocarbons – coal, gas and oil – comprised 85% of Australia’s total consumption of energy in 2023.
As The Australian’s “Energy Nation” liftout (19 June) conceded: “Australia’s energy transition is widely considered to be ailing” (see also “Coal power on comeback trail as wind, solar falter,” The Australian Financial Review, 5 July). Consequently, the Albanese government will fail to reach its 2030 emissions target.
Secondly, these targets are utterly pointless. Here and around the world, “net zero” by 2050 isn’t just fanciful; it’s delusional. Moreover, during the next few years the cost of Australia’s senseless 2030 target, which has already become oppressive, will rise dramatically; not surprisingly, the Liberal-National Coalition has disavowed it.
Thirdly, I show that if the federal government accepts reality and thus rejects the Climate Council’s mooted target (65-75% reduction of emissions from the 2005 level by 2035), it will thereby tacitly abandon “net zero” by 2050 – and the basis of the ALP’s “climate policy,” namely the 2015 Paris Agreement.
An Emerging Mainstream
Conclusions such as mine are no longer iconoclastic. Quite the contrary: they’re becoming conventional. According to Adam Creighton (“Net-Zero Target Is Pure Fantasy,” The Australian, 9 June 2022), the efforts “put into … (energy transitions and) emissions targets are a waste; they are simply not going to be met.” In “Europe’s electoral earthquake sounds warning for Greens” (The Australian, 27 June 2024), he added that it’s “increasingly evident that an electricity grid powered mainly by solar and wind power is a costly pipedream.” Indeed, says Creighton,
“A ‘greenlash’ is coming, as voters throughout the developed world realise how duped they’ve been by years of unscientific, uneconomic nonsense spouted by much of the media and so-called ‘experts.’”
In “Mission Impossible” (The Weekend Australian, 4-5 February 2023) Greg Sheridan concluded: “net zero hasn’t got a snowflake’s chance in hell. It’s a fraudulent concept … It requires an heroic leap of faith (and) magical thinking … The world is not going to decarbonise on anything like the scale Western policy makers now claim … Yet (the energy transition is) at the centre of Australian national policy” (see also “A price to pay for climate fantasy,” The Weekend Australian, 15-16 June). As a result, and as The Australian (6 March) editorialised: “few credible experts now expect the Albanese government has any prospect of meeting its legislated target of 82% renewable (sic) energy by 2050.”
It’s not just sceptics. On 15-16 June The Weekend Australian reported: “Australia’s most powerful group of solar and wind farm developers (says) Albanese will fail to hit his target of 82% renewables by 2030, as slow planning and onerous environmental approvals are stymieing efforts to build enough green energy this decade.”
“On any independent analysis,” concluded Jennie George, the former ACTU president and ALP MP in The Australian on 1 July, “Labor’s 2030 (intermittent power and CO2 emissions) targets won’t be met.”
Duelling over Targets
“Every Prime Minister since John Howard,” I observed in Investors beware: “Cheap” renewable are very expensive (14 June 2022), “has eventually been forced to choose between ‘saving the planet’ on the one hand and crucifying businesses and households on the other. Anthony Albanese will be no different. The new PM will examine opinion polls, ascertain his electoral self-interest and – damn his solemn promises at the (last) election – act accordingly. He will end the ‘climate wars’ by surrendering to reality.”
Two years later, Albanese hasn’t – yet – budged. Peter Dutton and the Liberal-National Coalition, on the other hand, have begun to repudiate fantasy and grope their way towards some semblance of reality.
On 8-9 June, The Weekend Australian reported that “Dutton will go to the next election opposing Labor’s 43% emissions reduction target by 2030.” It quoted him: “(there’s) no sense in signing up to targets you don’t have any prospect of achieving.” Either he or his political opponents are wrong: on 11 June, The Australian reported (and, in an interview on 25 June, Bowen repeated) that Albanese and Bowen insist that the government “is on track to reduce emissions by an ‘ambitious’ 43% by the end of the decade.”
Further, on 14 June The Australian reported that “Peter Dutton has opened up a new front in the climate wars by rejecting a possible 2035 emissions target of 65-75% … The Opposition Leader … demanded (that) the government release emissions modelling to understand the impact of a 65-75% target in a decade’s time. The Climate Change Authority, which is advising … Chris Bowen on his 2035 target, said in April (that) a target in the range of 65-75% below 2005 levels ‘would be ambitious, (but) could be achievable if additional actions are taken by governments, business, investors and households.’ Mr Bowen and the Prime Minister are refusing to say whether they’ll adopt such a target.”
OWID’s GHG Emissions Data
In order to assess Australia’s emissions targets, it’s vital to define and quantify Australia’s emissions – and place them into global and historical contexts. According to Hannah Ritchie, et al. (“Greenhouse gas emissions,” OurWorldInData.org, 2020, rev. 2024), “in discussions on climate change” people “tend to focus on carbon dioxide (CO2) – the most dominant greenhouse gas produced by the burning of fossil fuels, industrial production, and land use change. However, CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas … There are a number of others (such as) methane, nitrous oxide, and trace gases such as the group of ‘F-gases’ …” The remainder of this article refers to these gases collectively as “greenhouse gases” (GHGs).
Global GHG Emissions
OurWorldInData.org has compiled data which measure emissions of GHGs (hereafter, “emissions”) measured in billions of tonnes of “carbon dioxide-equivalents” (CO2e). OWID’s data use the conversion factors adopted by the 6th Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Globally, emissions have risen from an estimated 4.2 billion tonnes of CO2e in 1850 to 53.9 billion in 2022 (Figure 1). That’s a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 1.5%.
Figure 1: Global Emissions of GHGs, Billions of Tonnes of CO2e, Annual, 1850-2022
“Climate Action” or Other Factors?
Over this 172-year period, emissions have grown exponentially; in other words, a curvilinear (exponential) rather than a linear model best fits these data. Over the past decade, however, growth has slowed (CAGR = 0.41%). Indeed, emissions fell 3.7%, from 53.46 billion tonnes in 2019 to 51.46 billion in 2020. Is this deceleration a consequence of national governments’ actions (via the UN’s Paris Agreement, etc.) to abate and reduce emissions? Or of COVID-19 shutdowns and other factors?
I doubt that the longer-term slowdown and short-term shrinkage of emissions’ rate of growth has had much to do with governments’ actions – at least those that climate zealots demand. Instead, I suspect that – as has been true over the very long term – it’s more a consequence of wars, economic, financial and other crises, and the rising efficiency of energy consumption.
Figure 2: Global Emissions of GHGs, Annual Percentage Changes, 1851-2022
After trending mildly and erratically upwards during the century from the 1860s, since ca. 1960 emissions’ rate of growth has decelerated. On an annualised basis the trend is insignificant (Figure 2); on a ten-year basis, however, it’s weak but evident (Figure 3).
Reductions occurred during (and, presumably, as a result of) the First World War (average of -0.8% per year from 1914 to 1919), Great Depression (-2.5% per year from 1930 to 1933), Second World War (-0.6% per year from 1942 to 1945), Asian Crisis of 1998 (-3.5%), GFC (-0.2% in 2009) and COVID-19 panic (-3.7% in 2020).
Figure 3: Global Emissions of GHGs, Ten-Year CAGRs, 1860-2022
What else might explain the tendency, since ca. 1960, for emissions’ 10-year CAGRs to decelerate? The biggest factor, I reckon, has been the rising efficiency of energy consumption. As a result of technological advances, internal-combustion engines now consume much less fuel per kilometre driven, flown, etc., than they did previously. Similarly, factories require ever smaller quantities of energy in order to produce a given quantity of output, houses and offices require less energy to heat and cool, etc.
It’s trivially easy to demonstrate that any attempt to limit Australia’s emissions is utterly pointless. This country’s emissions, whether expressed as total amounts (Figure 4) or percentages of the world’s total (Figure 5), have always been miniscule. They’ve never comprised more than 1.9% of the world’s total, and presently comprise 1.1% (which is down sharply from 1.8% in 2001).
Figure 4: Global Emissions of GHGs, Billions of Tonnes of CO2e, by Continent, 1850-2022
On that basis, nobody in Australia can do anything that will affect either global emissions or this country’s (never mind the world’s) climate.
Figure 5: Global Emissions of GHGs, Percentage of Total by Continent, 1850-2022
Figure 4 and Figure 5 also show that the efforts of countries in Europe and North America to reduce their emissions have been and will remain futile. It’s true that since the 1980s Europe’s emissions have decreased. But that’s much more a consequence of the collapse of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact than of “climate action.”
In 1990, just before the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, Europe’s emissions exceeded 10 billion tonnes of CO2e. By 2000, they’d fallen to 7.5 billion. That’s a total reduction of ca. 27% and a CAGR of -2.95%. During these years “climate action” was thin on the ground, but throughout former Soviet-bloc nations in Eastern Europe, modern and cleaner energy and other infrastructure replaced older and dirtier facilities.
In the decade to 2010, as demands for “climate action” accelerated, Europe’s emissions rose slightly to 7.7 billion tonnes; and over the past decade – an era of climate hysteria – they’ve decreased to 6.6 billion. That’s a fall of 13% and a CAGR of -1.38%.
Yet that’s considerably less than the rates of shrinkage during the 1990s, and implies that subsequent cuts will be much harder and costlier.
Similarly, over the past 20 years emissions in North America have fallen. That’s almost entirely the consequence of the decrease in the U.S., which in turn has resulted from the “shale gale” and “fracking” revolution. These developments have greatly cheapened the price of “clean” gas and thereby enabled consumers to substitute it for relatively “dirty” coal and oil. Emissions in the U.S. have thus fallen from 7 billion tonnes in 2000 to 6 billion in 2022; that’s a total decrease of 14% and a CAGR of -0.71%.
As a result of these developments – which, it’s worth emphasising, stem mostly from factors other than “climate action” – Europe’s and North America’s shares of global emissions have plunged from ca. 23% (North America) and more than 30% (Europe) in the 1970s to 15% and 12%, respectively, in 2022 (Figure 5).
At the same time, however, in both absolute and relative terms, Asian countries have massively increased their emissions. Indeed, they’ve risen much more than those in Europe and the U.S. have abated; hence the overall increase of global emissions in Figure 1. In 1945, Asia generated 24% of the world’s emissions. Since then that percentage has risen virtually without interruption: it doubled by 2011 and in 2022 exceeded 56%.
Given the huge increase of emissions in Asia, the modest decreases in Europe and North America have availed nothing.
Another factor other than “climate action” has also been crucial. Most of the EU and a few American states are smug about their reductions of emissions (“if we’ve done it, so can you; and if you don’t, we’ll force you”). Yet much of their “cuts” aren’t genuine: they result from the “offshoring” of GHG-emitting industries.
Rather than host the manufacturing which emits these emissions, Australia, the EU, the U.S. now import from Asia the goods they once produced – and congratulate themselves for “saving the planet”!
Figure 6: Global Emissions of GHGs, Percentage of Total by Income, 1850-2022