With the carbon price helping to drive a large drop in pollution from the electricity sector Australia last year posted its biggest annual reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in 24 years of records.
The latest greenhouse gas inventory was released online without fanfare by Australia’s conservative Liberal-National government.
Fairfax Media reports it showed annual emissions excluding changes in land use were estimated at 538.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent in 2013, down 0.8 per cent on the previous year.
While the final figures may be revised, the annual drop is likely to exceed the only two other years of emissions falls, in 2009 and 2010, since the tally began in 1990.
Fairfax Media reports the electricity sector reported emissions fell five per cent last year, with all but one other sector showing an increase.
The carbon price has its most direct impact on power generators, which account for about one-third of Australia’s emissions outside changes to forest cover.
The carbon price, now at $24.15 a tonne, will rise to $25.40 a tonne from next month and will apply until its likely scrapping when the new upper house Senate votes on the Liberal-National government’s repeal bills, expected soon after July 1.
The government’s climate policies have been in the spotlight with Prime Minister Tony Abbott in Washington, soon after President Barack Obama introduced the most ambitious emissions cuts in US history, forcing power plants to slash 2005-level emissions 30 per cent by 2030.
Mr Abbott was forced to defend the government’s alternative policy to a carbon price, which is based on paying polluters to curb emissions.
However, Australian Greens Party leader Senator Christine Milne said: “The price on pollution is working and it is time Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Environment Minister Greg Hunt stopped lying to Australia and the world.
“The government is trying to hide the fact that the price on pollution is the cheapest and most effective way to do something about global warming, and mitigate the future extreme storms, droughts and floods that will ravage Australia over the coming decades.”
A spokesman for Mr Hunt said national emissions had fallen only 0.1 per cent in the first full year of the carbon price, showing that the price “does not work”.
Fairfax Media reports since the start of the carbon price in July 2012, total carbon emissions from the National Electricity Market, which serves eastern Australia, have fallen 17.2 million tonnes, or about 11 per cent, according to Dr Hugh Saddler of energy consultancy Pitt and Sherry.
Slumping electricity demand, in part because of closures of aluminium smelters and other manufacturing, has contributed to the emissions drop.
The carbon price, though, has also discouraged some energy use while spurring more production from low-carbon energy sources, particularly wind and hydro.
However rising gas prices will prompt a switch to coal-fired power plants in coming months, suggesting emissions falls from the power sector are likely to taper off even if demand extends its slump, Dr Saddler said.
“I don’t think it will continue,” Dr Saddler said. “It’s as good as it gets.”
John Connor, chief executive of the Climate Institute, said the drop in 2013 emissions indicated existing policies was doing the intended job.
“We have a stable, set-and-forget default mechanism, that’s going to work,” Mr Connor said.
Any weakening of the Renewable Energy Target (RET), now under review by a government-appointed panel led by climate change doubter Dick Warburton, would also undermine emissions reduction efforts, Mr Connor told Fairfax Media.
The full greenhouse gas report can be found here.
