AAP FACTCHECK – The federal government has heralded a significant fall in emissions as it claims it’s on track to meet its climate goals.
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen declared in his annual climate change statement that “emissions have fallen to 28.2 per cent below 2005 levels” adding that Australia is “on track” to achieve a 43 per cent reduction by 2030.
The 28.2 per cent cited is accurate under the agreed international accounting terms by which national emissions are recorded and reported.
However, experts told AAP FactCheck this reporting falls short of presenting a full picture of decarbonisation, with one saying it is akin to “an accounting trick”.
Australia is among more than 190 countries that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, requiring it to report its greenhouse gas emissions every year in a standardised format.
This came into force in 2005, providing a benchmark for future comparisons.
Emissions reporting is broken down across several sectors: agriculture, waste, industrial processes and energy. The energy sector is further broken down into subsections of electricity, stationary energy excluding electricity, transport and fugitive emissions, or losses, leaks and other releases of gases.
All these sectors and subsectors look solely at the greenhouse gases put into the atmosphere.
The other sector, Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF), differs in that it also considers emissions removed from the atmosphere as a result of land use changes. As such, the LULUCF total can be a negative figure.
For example, if trees are planted, then an amount of greenhouse gas will be calculated as having been removed from the atmosphere. If trees are cut down, the opposite is taken into account.
Changes to make crop and livestock management more sustainable are also considered.
At the time the reporting rules were decided on, the Australian government lobbied for the inclusion of LULUCF as a way of measuring emissions progress, so much so that it became known as the “Australia clause”.
Experts told AAP FactCheck that LULUCF has done most of the heavy lifting when it comes to Australia’s reduction in reported emissions.
Professor Andrew Macintosh, an environmental law and policy scholar at the Australian National University, said the inclusion of LULUCF made the picture “if not misleading then certainly incomplete”.
While the cited 28.2 per cent reduction appeared a success story, he said, “the story outside of the LULUCF sector is complicated, with both positives and negatives”.
According to the government’s latest quarterly greenhouse gas emission figures (all figures below calculated to one decimal place), Australia emitted 440.6 million tonnes (Mt) in the year ending June 2024. This includes a -88.4Mt total for LULUCF.
This is a 28.2 per cent decrease on the total emissions of 613.4Mt for the year ending June 2005.
LULUCF makes up the majority of the reduction, accounting for 163.4Mt of the total 172.8Mt fall in emissions.
If LULUCF is excluded, Australia’s emissions were 538.4Mt in the year to June 2005 and 529Mt in the year to June 2024, a reduction of just 9.4Mt or 1.7 per cent.
A more detailed picture emerges by looking at each sector and subsector individually.
Electricity is where Australia has had the most success, reducing 22.4 per cent from 196.7Mt in 2005 to 152.7Mt in 2024. This is largely due to the uptake in renewables.
There have been more modest reductions, and from lower bases, in agriculture, a 4.8 per cent reduction from 88.9Mt to 84.6Mt, and waste, an 11.5 per cent fall from 15.7Mt to 13.9Mt.
However, this is where the successes end.
Stationary energy excluding electricity has increased in emissions by 20.9 per cent from 82.2Mt to 99.4Mt. This is emissions from fossil fuels for the creation of energy other than electricity.
Fugitive emissions, from the extraction and distribution of fossil fuels, have increased 11.7 per cent from 42.8Mt to 47.8Mt.
Despite a slowdown during COVID, transport has also been on an upward trajectory, increasing 20.1 per cent from 82Mt to 98.5Mt. This includes emissions from air, road, rail and shipping transportation.
Emissions from industrial processes have also increased 6.6 per cent, from 30.1Mt to 32.1Mt.
Associate Professor Bryce Kelly, an expert in greenhouse gas measurements at the University of NSW, described the use of LULUCF as "a short-term accounting trick" which can be used to put a positive spin on efforts to decarbonise.
He said LULUCF is concerned with additions and removals to the "modern carbon cycle" involving the likes of vegetation and soil.
Trees and plants absorb carbon, but eventually they die and release carbon back into the atmosphere, he explained. Large amounts of this stored carbon can be rapidly released in a bushfire, for example. So while planting trees, for example, is part of the solution, it's not a long-term solution on its own.
He said the greater problem relates to the slow "geological" or "ancient" carbon cycle, which involves the storage and movement of carbon through the earth's system over millions of years.
"When we're burning fossil fuel ... we are releasing carbon that's been trapped for 250 million years or more," he said.
"We've taken all that geological carbon that's been trapped ... and we've released it for 200 years now, and we're saying we're offsetting it with land with growing trees and soil.
"That's what needs to be really addressed - those emissions (from the geological cycle)."
He also questioned the accuracy of some of the cited data, noting that Australian authorities estimate some categories of emissions data with what's known as a "bottom-up" approach.
So rather than measuring the actual emissions based on atmospheric observations, certain emissions estimates are calculated based on types of activity and emissions usually resulting from that activity.
For some subcategories, uncertainty in the estimate can reach plus or minus 50 per cent, meaning the true value could be significantly higher or lower, Assoc Prof Kelly said.
Prof Macintosh said the question of how best to measure emission reductions is so complex that it's worthy of a thesis paper.
However, he said Australia and other countries should have separate targets for energy and industrial sectors, agricultural and waste sectors, and LULUCF.
Without the assistance of LULUCF, he said Australia would not be on track to meet its 2030 target of cutting emissions by 43 per cent below 2005 levels.
"While decarbonisation of the electricity grid is driving down emissions, the resulting emission reductions are being offset by increases in emissions from other sectors, particularly oil and gas (extraction and processing of LNG)," he said.
"To accommodate the increases associated with LNG (liquefied natural gas), there would need to be significant reductions in emissions from other major sectors."
Asked if the current reporting methods, including LULUCF, give an accurate picture of Australia's progress towards decarbonisation, a spokesperson for Mr Bowen said emissions targets and reporting "are transparent and consistent with international accounting rules under the Paris Agreement".
The spokesperson added: "The government has put in place strong policies to reduce emissions from fossil fuels and industrial processes, including support for renewable energy, New Vehicle Efficiency Standards and our Safeguard reforms.
"Renewable electricity is already making a significant contribution to reducing emissions in our National Electricity Market, with renewables averaging 42 per cent this financial year, up from around 30 per cent in 2021."
