Australia's Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Dr Pep Canadell - Global Carbon Project
3 May 2007
In light of this week’s debate between the Federal Government and the Climate Institute on Australia’s greenhouse emissions, Dr Pep Canadell, Executive Director of the Global Carbon Project seeks to clarify the current situation below.

The Kyoto Protocol (KP) allows Australia an 8% increase from the base line year 1990. This is quite a unique condition from most of the other developed countries that need to reduce emissions from 5% to 8%.

The KP allows countries that have large emissions from the land use sector (eg, deforestation) to use a reduction of those emissions to achieve the overall net emission targets (that is in addition to reductions in emissions from energy). Given the large emissions from deforestation during the 1980s and early 90s (and therefore during the 1990 base year), and the massive reduction in deforestation during the mid and late 1990s, Australia has achieved a massive net carbon emission reduction since 1990.

The National Greenhouse Gas Inventory produced by the Australian Greenhouse Office is the authoritative and only source of data to put together the entire anthropogenic carbon balance for Australia.

The latest inventory for the year 2004 (Australian Greenhouse Office 2006) shows that emissions in million tons of CO2-equivalent from energy have increased 34.7 % from 1990 to 2004, largely due to a 43% increase in emissions from stationary energy and a 23.4% increase in emissions from transport energy (see Table 1)

Table 1: Summary Table and Figure from Australia National Greenhouse Gas Inventory for 2004 (SOURCE: Australian Greenhouse Office 2006)
The national inventory also shows that emissions from land use, land use change and forestry (where reductions of emissions from deforestation are counted) has decreased a massive 72.5% (see Table 1).

When all sectors are put together, Australian emissions in 2004 were 2.3% above the emissions in 1990, and largely on track to meet or slightly exceed its non-binding KP commitment of 8% above 1990 (non-binding because Australia hasn’t ratified the KP). AGO produces estimates for the future emissions to 2012 (the end of the KP first commitment period) which should have relatively few uncertainties given the short time frame of the projection.

Figure 1: Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by sector in 2004
(SOURCE: Australian Greenhouse Office 2006)

Comment

Return to main Science Blog page

If you are a scientist and wish to contribute to this Science Blog, please contact the AusSMC.
Comments received are moderated by the AusSMC and placement cannot be guaranteed.