By Bernard Keane

Copyright crikey

If the government’s 2035 emissions abatement target is too low (62-70%, consistent with well over 2 degrees of global heating) and only applies to just over 20% of our fossil fuel footprint, is it at least achievable, which is the government’s rationale for why it’s so low?

The list of policy tools outlined in the government’s Net Zero Plan, also released yesterday, is lengthy but unconvincing. Expanding the Clean Energy Finance Corporation’s funding by $2 billion to bankroll rapid rollout of renewables, and the inevitable “streamlining” of approvals for renewable projects, a $40 million plan for more kerbside charging of electric vehicles, a $50 million pork barrel for sports facilities, further tightening the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard in 2026, a billion dollars for low carbon liquid fuel, overhauling the Safeguard Mechanism when it is reviewed next year, and $5 billion to subsidise heavy industry to decarbonise.

The $5 billion for decarbonisation will be directed to investment that companies might have taken anyway (or would have taken if there was a meaningful carbon price in place), and governments have been promising to streamline approvals for renewables projects for years.

And the Safeguard Mechanism, notoriously, only safeguards the right of heavy CO2 emitters to continue emitting for the price of buying some essentially worthless Australian Carbon Credit Units.

In fact, Labor is relying very heavily on the fiction of carbon capture and storage of various kinds to hit both the 2035 target and net zero by 2050. The Net Zero Plan details how “carbon removal” of various kinds will actually fall between now and 2030 — that’s based on the assumption that the heavy rainfall of much of this decade on the east coast will abate, reducing sequestration in vegetation.

But between 2030 and 2035, the government assumes 18 million more tonnes of CO2 will be removed a year as part of a net reduction in Australia’s emissions of 135 million tonnes a year. In other words, more than one-eighth of the emissions reduction burden to 2035 will be carried by allegedly removing carbon from the atmosphere, rather than reducing emissions in the first place.

If we had a credible Australian Carbon Credit Unit system and a science-based program of accreditation for human-induced regeneration rather than what is effectively a vast rort, such a figure might be plausible. But the only proper response to the figures between 2035 and 2050 is incredulity: the government forecasts that, in order to reach net zero by 2050, we’ll be removing an extra 87 million tonnes of carbon a year beyond levels achieved in 2035 — providing a total of 167 million tonnes of carbon removal a year, which coincidentally is the exact amount required to offset 167 million tonnes of unabateable emissions, compared to 74 million tonnes of carbon removal now.

How is this prodigious feat of carbon sequestration to be achieved? Step forward our old friend carbon capture and storage: despite the longstanding evidence that carbon capture and storage technologies simply never deliver even a fraction of their promised benefits, Labor has committed to “open a second round of the Carbon Capture Technologies Program for $52 million to continue to accelerate the development of new carbon management technologies, critical to reaching net zero by 2050.”

And it’s hard to believe the authors of the Net Zero Plan kept a straight face when they wrote of their assumption that “Liquified Natural Gas and gas facilities implement carbon capture and storage technology where it is cost effective”. What carbon capture and storage is cost-effective at is being used as a fig leaf for climate inaction by both fossil fuel companies and governments alike, rather than capturing and storing anything.

Indeed, the plan waxes lyrical about the coming technological breakthroughs on this front:

Engineered carbon removal and management technologies could complement land-based carbon removals. These technologies can abate large volumes of emissions with a relatively small land-footprint — particularly those using geological storage. They could become increasingly important to sustain net zero emissions — and potentially net negative emissions — beyond 2050. The adoption of engineered CDR technologies is currently hindered by high costs. However, investment now could provide opportunity to innovate to reduce costs and provide industries with more options to offset their emissions.

Sounds like we better get on board now — particularly with the prospect of cooling the planet with all those negative emissions.

What a shame such technologies offer no more carbon removal than the discredited human-induced regeneration vegetation techniques the government is spending so much on. A conservative, risk-averse approach to emissions abatement would assume that carbon removal is unverifiable and should not be relied on. If we do that, Labor’s 2035 target is a 60% reduction on 2005 levels, not 62%, and would leave us still 27% adrift of net zero in 2050.

And of course all that’s a fraction of the emissions we continue to send overseas, for which the government denies all responsibility. There are plenty of fantasies in all this. That we and our kids won’t suffer profoundly as a result of our recklessness is one of them.