Analysts are now warning Australia’s 2030 United Nations sponsored Paris Agreement climate pledge will be harder to achieve after the conservative Liberal-National government opted to not to extend funding to its “centrepiece” emissions policy and omitted spending on new carbon-cutting programs.
Spending on climate issues is projected to drop from $3 billion in the current year, or 0.6 per cent of total spending, to $1.6 billion for 2018-19.
By 2021-22, the outlay will shrink further to $1.25 billion, or just 0.2 per cent of the budget for that year, the government’s budget papers reveal.
The $2.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF), which was set up by the LNP government, under the previous Prime Minister Tony Abbott, to substitute for the repeal of the Labor government’s carbon price, was not topped up in this year’s budget.
Currently it has just $265 million unspent.
The lack of climate funding “is really, really distressing”, Tim Baxter, a research associate at Melbourne University’s Climate and Energy College, told Fairfax Media.
“This isn’t the trajectory we need to be having right now, we need to be ramping up, not winding down.”
Climate change was also absent from Treasurer Scott Morrison’s budget speech, save for a mention that Australia would “maintain our responsible and achievable emissions reduction target at 26-28 per cent (versus 2005 levels by 2030), and not the 45 per cent demanded by the (Labor) opposition”.
Labor’s climate spokesman Mark Butler, said the government’s climate and energy policies were “nothing short of a disgrace”, and that Australia’s emissions “will keep rising all the way to 2030”.
“This budget delivers zero new policies or funding to drive down pollution and combat climate change,” Mr Butler told Fairfax Media.
“They are not even continuing their wasteful direct action program” he said, referring to the ERF.
Josh Frydenberg, Environment and Energy Minister, said Australia had “a strong suite of policies in place to meet our international targets including the phase-down of hydro fluorocarbons, the ERF, the Renewable Energy Target and the National Energy Productivity Plan to deliver a 40 per cent improvement by 2030”.
“The government is also committed to the implementation of the National Energy Guarantee (NEG) for a more affordable, reliable and sustainable energy system.”
The onus to find fresh sources for emission cuts has increased, given the government’s insistence that the electricity sector, accounting for about one-third of total carbon pollution, should only meet a 26 per cent reduction out to 2030.
That target, embedded in its signature NEG, is considered to be unnecessarily low even by major electricity companies because of the availability of increasingly competitive renewable sources of power.
“To reach our Paris goals we’re going to need to see considerable investment elsewhere in the economy, ” Mr Baxter told Fairfax Media.
“This budget has done nothing to provide for that.”
Under the Paris Agreement, Australia has pledged to reach net-zero emissions by the second half of this century as part of the international pact to avert dangerous global warming.
“There are certain areas of our emissions that will be considerably more difficult to deal with, whether it’s fugitives or transport,” Mr Baxter said.
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We don’t actually have a road map to getting to zero in those sectors of the economy.”
Most of the ERF money has been allocated, with much of it going to the rural sector to encourage carbon sequestration in vegetation and soils, but large-scale land clearing in Queensland and an increase in New South Wales will most likely have increased emissions from the land.
The largest environmental spending item in the budget appears to be $535.9 million “to secure the future of the World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef and the jobs its supports”, the budget papers said.
Dealing with the effects of climate change, though, was not stated as a target for the funds.
