Labor’s COP30 fossil fuel phase-out doublespeak

You could be forgiven for thinking Australia’s support last week for the COP30 declaration on a “transition away from fossil fuels”, means the Australia Government is, or at least intends to transition away from fossil fuels. The text is very clear, saying the signatory countries will work towards;

On orderly and equitable transition away from fossil fuels, aligned with pathways consistent with limiting global temperature rise to1.5°C.

But in reality, the Australian Government is doing the exact opposite allowing an enormous expansion of fossil fuel production in Australia.

One of the first acts of the re-elected Labor Government this year was to approve a forty-year extension of the largest and most polluting gas export project in Australia, Woodsides’ North West Shelf project.

This single approval will result in up to around 80 million tonnes of emissions annually equivalent to around 12 average sized coal power stations and 4.3 billion tonnes of emissions over its 40-year life. That’s around 20 times more emissions than the government claims it will save by 2030 under its main climate policy the Safeguard Mechanism.

This comes on top of 11 new coal mine approvals under the Albanese Government’s watch, almost entirely for export, that will result in 1.7 billion tonnes of emissions, equivalent to more than three full years of Australia’s domestic total emissions.

The Government’s rationalisation is that they don’t consider the emissions from burning Australia’s exported coal and gas in customer countries our responsibility, because technically those emissions are not included in Australia’s emissions reporting.

This is akin to Saudi Arabia saying its not doing much to cause climate change because most of the oil they produce is exported. It doesn’t pass the pub test.

And the Government’s plan is to continue approving new fossil fuel projects, locking in decades of new coal and gas production.

The Government’s latest emissions projections show a small fall in Australia’s emissions, but as noted above this doesn’t include the vast bulk of the emissions form Australia’s Saudi Arabia scale fossil fuel exports.

However, because the methane leaks from fossil fuel export projects are counted in Australia, the Government makes assumptions about future fossil fuel projects in the projections, and those assumptions are revealing. The report says;

The Darwin LNG facility is assumed to resume production in 2026 with gas from the Barossa field. The Pluto LNG expansion is assumed to go ahead in 2027. The expansion includes the construction of a second train at the Pluto LNG onshore facility with gas sourced from the Scarborough field, which is a relatively low CO₂ field compared with most other fields currently supplying offshore gas. In 2028, the Crux field is assumed to provide backfill to the Prelude Floating LNG project.

In 2033, the Browse basin is assumed to provide backfill gas to the North West Shelf LNG facility.

The Pluto and Scarborough expansion will mean around 1.4 billion tonnes of emissions over its lifetime, Browse around 1.6 billion tonnes and the Darwin LNG project will result in around 340 million tonnes.

And that’s without even looking at the multitude of proposed new coal mines and mine extensions in NSW and Queensland.

In fact, the in its Resources and Energy Major Projects list, Australian Government lists around 90 major new coal and gas projects as “under development” around Australia.

Australia is the world’s second largest fossil fuel exporter and fifth largest fossil fuel producer. What we do matters a lot to the world’s climate. Emissions from coal and gas exported from Australia are making fires, floods, heatwaves and other disasters more frequent and extreme in Australia, the Pacific and the rest of the world.

Its time the Australian government stopped playing a disingenuous double game of pretending to care about the climate, while doing the exact opposite and expanding our already massive fossil fuel exports.

The good news is that they can.

Labor has a huge majority, and combined with the climate focused independents and the greens there is a climate super-majority in Australia’s parliament, reflecting the views of the electorate.

Its time for the Australian Government to put the wellbeing and security of Australians ahead of fossil fuel industry profits.

Mark Ogge is a principal advisor at the Australia Institute.