Australia is failing to map out a fossil fuel transition plan

Tuvalu and Ireland have just set the agenda for the next chapter of the fossil fuel transition. Australia needs to show up with more than talking points and have an action plan.

At a side event during the 81st UN General Assembly, Prime Minister Feleti Teo of Tuvalu and Ireland’s Minister of State Timmy Dooley unveiled their shared vision for the Second Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels (TAFF-2), to be co-hosted in Tuvalu in 2027. The theme, “From Pathways to Delivery: Making the Transition Possible for Every Country,” challenges the 57 nations who gathered in Santa Marta, Colombia, last year to move from agreeing on the destination to showing their working on it.

TAFF-2 was originally pencilled in for April next year. It has now shifted to July, giving academics, scientists, Indigenous groups, subnational groups and NGOs more room to make submissions and define the roadmaps that would deliver a fossil fuel phase-out, a smart call for a process that, at its foundation, deals with existential problems for all of us.

The central ask hasn’t changed. Tuvalu’s Minister for Climate Change and Environment, Dr Maina Talia, has set three pillars: plan the transition, finance the transition, transform the real economy. Countries must name what’s stopping them from leaving coal, oil and gas behind, then bring roadmaps that show a timed, funded, transparent phase-out.

As Teo put it, come with “a challenge you are prepared to work on.” For Tuvalu, this is about sovereignty. Small island states pay some of the world’s highest energy prices for fuel shipped across oceans, while carrying almost none of the blame for the crisis threatening to submerge them. Talia has framed Tuvalu’s approach through Tuakoi, the spirit of being a good neighbour, and wants voices underrepresented at the first conference heard this time.

Australia should listen hard, because we’re one of those voices, and we haven’t been honest about our own problem. We’re the world’s third largest fossil fuel exporter, behind only Russia and Saudi Arabia. For years we’ve been sold a line from our government that rooftop solar proves we’re doing our bit. That line ignores the export ledger and the approvals register: since 2022, the Albanese government has approved or extended 37 new or expanded coal, oil and gas projects.

You cannot hold up a solar panel in one hand while waving through new fossil fuel projects with the other and call it a transition. That’s gaslighting of the Australian public and of every Pacific nation looking to us to act in good faith.

Our participation in this process has been strange from the start. Signing the original Colombia Declaration in Belém made us a founding member of the 24-country bloc, and one of its largest fossil fuel producers in this grouping. Yet Minister Chris Bowen was not even in attendance at the First Conference in Santa Marta. Instead, a departmental official stood in his place for the final 2 days of the weeklong meeting, and no Australian made a formal statement.

Weeks later, asked whether the declaration sat awkwardly beside Australia’s gas expansion plans, Prime Minister Albanese simply insisted gas is “part of the transition.” Then Minister Bowen skipped the Santa Marta conference, instead sending senior officials, while ministers from the other 56 countries sent ministers and elected representatives to get on with the work.

We now know why Australia failed to turn up to the process it signed up to. FOI documents show the departmental delegate sent in Bowen’s place, David Higgins, was explicitly briefed to stay “non-committal” on specific outcomes, while still angling for visibility ahead of Australia’s turn as COP31 President of Negotiations. The briefing pack handed to Higgins came pre-loaded with talking points defending our continued fossil fuel extraction and gas exports, alongside Australia’s draft negotiating position on Pacific nations’ demands under the Tassiriki Call. Large sections withheld personal details under section 47F(1), and Australia’s diplomatic strategy under section 33. A government that redacts its own negotiating position from the public isn’t managing diplomacy. It’s managing fossil fuel exposure.

For TAFF-2, that pattern must end. We need a climate minister at the table for the whole process, not an official dropping in for the closing session to deliver vague talking points.

So, what would an honest roadmap for Australia look like? The Australia Institute released analysis demonstrating what a serious Transition Away from Fossil Fuels roadmap would look like for our government and nation, with clear, actionable points.

First, no new coal and gas approvals. Almost 100 new projects sit in the pipeline, and the IEA says we hold the world’s largest coal export pipeline.

Second, end fossil fuel subsidies, which topped $62 billion between 2020 and 2025. That dwarfs our Pacific aid, and climate-specific aid is smaller still: just $1.3 billion to the Pacific and PNG over the same period, of which Pacific countries received only 42 per cent, or $543 million. For every $1 Pacific countries received in climate finance, Australia spent nearly $113 making fossil fuels cheaper.

Third, tax gas exports properly. Australia collects more from student loan repayments than from gas exporters under the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax. A 25 per cent export tax could raise $17 billion a year, enough to fund the Disaster Ready Fund for decades.

Fourth, legislate a phase-out timeline for existing production, giving workers and regional communities real lead time.

Fifth, rule out false solutions. More fraudulent offsets are entering our carbon market via a new method that credits the NSW Government for creating a national park near Coffs Harbour, a park promised since 2015 and budgeted for since 2023. A protection promised years in advance that pulls no additional carbon out of the atmosphere means the so-called offsets are worthless, since creating more permits to pollute just lets polluters pollute more.

Australia is also an outlier in letting our biggest polluters use unlimited offsets to greenwash up to 100% of their emission reduction obligations. Almost nobody else does this; California caps offsets at 6 per cent. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) share the same flaw: pretending harm is undone and cooking the books, while emissions keep increasing.

Finally, sign the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, something our Pacific neighbours have asked for years.

Tuvalu and Ireland have given every country eight months to bring something real. Australia has the analysis, the obligation and the ability. We are a rich nation that can do what we want, and as the driest continent on the planet, also uniquely exposed to the harms caused by a rapidly heating planet.

The question is whether our government will finally send a minister and act on our promises to phase out fossil fuels, not just talk about rooftop solar panels.

Louise Morris is Head of Fossil Fuel Transition at the Australia Institute, with 20 years’ experience encompassing climate, energy, forest protection, and law reform in the not-for-profit sector, and federal politics.