Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says his government’s 2035 emissions reduction target is ambitious but achievable. Photo: Thomas Lucraft.
The Federal Government has released its long-anticipated 2035 carbon emissions reduction target, as a range of 62 per cent to 70 per cent on 2005 emissions.
It will confirm the goal at the United Nations General Assembly in New York this month.
Labor claims it is an ambitious target that will help the nation achieve net zero by 2050, but the Opposition has described it as nonsense, while climate advocates say it is not enough.
Anthony Albanese said his government had accepted the Climate Change Authority’s independent advice and has set the target accordingly.
Describing it as ambitious but achievable, the Prime Minister said the target sends the right investment signal while also responding to the science of climate change.
“It builds on what we know are the lowest cost actions we can deliver over the next decade while leaving room for new technologies to take things up a gear,” he said.
“This is a responsible target, backed by the science, backed by a practical plan to get there and built on proven technology.
“It’s the right target to protect our environment, to protect and advance our economy and jobs, and to ensure that we act in our national interest, and in the interest of this and future generations.”
Setting a 2035 target is a compulsory part of Australia’s commitment to the Paris Agreement to keep temperatures from rising to dangerous levels and is an interim target to the legislated net-zero goal.
To help reach the 2035 target, the government says attention must be paid to further developing the five priority areas of clean electricity across the economy; lowering emissions by electrification and efficiency; expanding clean fuel use; accelerating new technologies; and scaling up net carbon removals.
In revealing the target on Thursday (18 September), the government also announced a new $5 billion Net Zero Fund in the National Reconstruction Fund, to help industrial facilities decarbonise and scale up more renewables and low emissions manufacturing
A further $2 billion is slated for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to help put downward pressure on electricity prices.
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen said the global shift to clean energy is the most significant economic transformation since the Industrial Revolution.
It also presents Australia with its “best-ever” economic opportunity.
“If we get it right, if we make the right investments at the right time, we can grow our economy, create good jobs for Australians,” Mr Bowen said.
“The Climate Change Authority puts it well in their advice to me. They say we have an abundance of solar and wind above the ground and a periodic table of critical minerals below the ground. And that is our key to economic prosperity.”
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley panned the target and promised to fight it.
“It’s economy-wide and economy-wrecking, which is why the Coalition is dead-against these 2035 emissions reduction targets,” Ms Ley said.
“They’re a fantasy, they rest on flawed assumptions, and they actually can’t be believed … We don’t believe in legislating targets at all, but we certainly don’t believe in this fanciful nonsense, because what we’re seeing now in front of us, in households and businesses, is a trifecta of failures.
“Costs under this government are going up, reliability is going down, and of course emissions are flat lining – they were 28 per cent when we left office and they’re 28 per cent now.”
Nationals leader David Littleproud described the 2035 target as an “expensive charade” that would wreck the economy and harm regional Australia the most.
Greens leader Larissa Waters was also critical of the interim target but for different reasons.
She said the target range wasn’t ambitious enough and that the government had betrayed the public who voted for climate action.
Senator Waters accused Mr Albanese of pandering to the giant fossil fuel companies.
“It is not ambitious to have a target that does not restrict coal and gas, that doesn’t end native forest logging,” she said.
“And the direct result of such a weak and thoroughly disappointing target is that the climate risk report scenarios which said 1.5 million people’s homes risk being flooded by 2050, heatwave days leading to more deaths, more natural disasters, destruction of species, extinction rates – all of that will come to pass because the Prime Minister has chosen to kiss the hand of coal and gas companies rather than managing that polluting industry.”
Independent ACT senator David Pocock said it was not an ambitious enough target to take to the world stage, and he accused the government of not listening to the science.
“We cannot give up on this,” he said.
“We have to keep fighting and keep pushing – the Labor party, the major parties – to take our future seriously.”
