Flying in the face of the data from his conservative Liberal-National government’s Department of Environment and Energy the Energy Minister has again insisted Australia’s emissions are going down.
The government’s official figures show emissions continue to increase, as the government struggles to sell the latest incarnation of its energy policy.
In an interview with the ABCTV program Insiders, Angus Taylor repeatedly stated emissions had decreased by one per cent repeating the line first said by the prime minister, Scott Morrison, that Australia would meet its United Nations sponsored Paris Agreement commitments in “a canter”.
“Yes, they’re coming down and the department rightly believes they’re going to continue to go down and the result of this is we will reach, not just our Kyoto targets and still in the Kyoto period, we will reach our Paris targets,” he said.
The latest report released by the environment department, looking at emissions between September 2017 and September 2018, showed total emissions in Australia had increased by 0.9 per cent, continuing a pattern of increases over the past five years.
That rise in emissions was largely due to an increase in Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) exports, but other sectors, including stationary energy, transport and waste sectors also contributed.
Emissions in the electricity sector did continue to decrease, with brown coal supply down by 12.3 per cent while energy generation from renewable sources increased by 14.2 per cent
The last substantial fall in Australian emissions occurred after the former Labor government of then Prime Minister Julia Gillard put a price on carbon.
Derided, and wrongly labelled a “carbon tax” by the then Liberal-National opposition, it ultimately led to Mr Abbott winning the next federal election, after which he abolished the legislation.
Since then, successive Liberal-National governments have struggled to settle on an energy policy, with its most serious attempt, the National Energy Guarantee (NEG), leading to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull being replaced in that position by the latest incumbent, Scott Morrison.
Under pressure from moderates and the electoral reality that the Liberal-Nationals needs to hold on to its inner city ‘small l Liberal’ seats if it is to have a chance at retaining power, Mr Morrison unveiled a new energy policy late last month, announcing what amounts to a reboot of Mr Abbott’s Direct Action policy, now relabelled Climate Solutions.
The government has also not ruled out underwriting coal-fired generation projects in the future, with Resources Minister Matt Canavan admitting last week to Sky News the number was “around 10”, after Mr Taylor repeatedly declined to put a figure on it.
In his ABCTV interview, Mr Taylor still declined to put a figure on how many coal projects the government was considering underwriting, stating “I’m the energy minister, I am not going to commit to a number here and now”, but he said more competition was good, despite the contradiction in projects.
“You put your finger on it, we want more competition,” he said.
“We want more competition, not less.
“And if what we’re doing with Snowy 2.0 and what we’re doing with battery of the nation and what we’re doing with underwriting results in more competition against ourselves, as you put it, that is a great thing because the result of that is lower prices, keeping the lights on and avoiding the situation we had in Victoria in January, 200,000 houses lost their lights, and Portland Aluminium smelter had to go off-line.
The incidents in Victoria have been attributed to three coal-fired power stations failing during a period of intense hot weather.
“We got to address this. It is urgent. That’s why we’re doing it a number of ways.
It will result in more supply, it will result in more competition as you rightly point out and that will drive down prices,” Mr Taylor added.
