Four charts that give you the good and bad news of the newest greenhouse gas update

The June quarter greenhouse gas emissions have been released, and you know they are good news because they were released on a Thursday morning, and not Friday afternoon.

One of the weird things about the greenhouse gas emission is that the Government can release when they want – so long as they do it within 5 months of the quarter being measured covered. Today’s release covers the June quarter, so they had till the end of November to release it. In the past this has meant releasing the bad news around 4pm Friday afternoon.

But good news cannot wait! And in the June quarter annual emissions fell 2.1% over the past year in the June quarter there was a nice 0.9% drop, driven mostly by falls in electricity and fugitive emissions.

The drop in fugitive emissions is mostly from “reductions in natural gas venting emissions from new carbon capture and storage activities and a decline in production from underground coal mining.”

Less gas and coal is good, who knew?

The drop in electricity emissions came off the back of less coal and gas emissions and more wind and solar:

So good news.

The bad news is that even if we are generous and take the trend of emissions under this Government since June 2023, the pace of decline still needs to be faster if we are going to get to our targets (weak though they are):

Right now, the trend since the middle of 2023 would have emissions only being 32% below 2005 levels by 2030 and just 36% below by 2035 – well short of the Government’s target range of 62% – 70%.

And we also need to remember that the vast majority of the cuts in emissions since 2005 are from including land use. In 2005 there was a high level of land clearing, especially in Queensland. By virtue of not clearing as much land as in that one year, Australia is able claim a large drop in emissions. If we exclude land use (as every other country does) the drop in emissions would be just 4%:

The true story of Australia’s drop in emissions is seen when we breakdown emissions by category:

 

The good news is that over the past two years, the drop has been more widespread – with all categories except transport and our tax incentivised addiction to big dumb utes, keeping transport emissions high.

So, we do at least have good news. Any reduction in emissions is to be celebrated. But the pace of the fall remains far too slow and the path ahead relies on targets set that remain too weak.

The Government is likely to release their updates projection figures tomorrow, which will provide a sense of when the Government at least believes the pace of emissions cuts will drop in order to reach their targets.