Tech superstar Canva has signed on to iron ore miner Fortescue Metals’ real zero campaign calling for the Australian government to “abandon the net zero smokescreen”.
The iron ore miner published an open letter in newspapers around the country, signed by 44 business people, philanthropists and activists, calling for the Australia government to replace net zero targets with a hard end date for fossil fuel use.
The campaign asks for an end to fossil fuel subsidies, an immediate halt to new gas and coal project approvals, and policies that help rather than hinder decarbonisation such as incentivising renewable energy adoption and investing in electrification.
Real zero is the complete removal of fossil fuels from a supply chain — Fortescue has a goal of hitting real zero for scope 1 and scope 2 emissions by 2030 at its Pilbara iron ore operations, which means no burning of gas or diesel for electricity or land transport and machinery.
Net zero is where emissions are allowed but supposed to be balanced out elsewhere by using offsets, themselves a potential risk given the frequency that even state carbon credit programs are accused of fraud, such as Australia’s ACCU scheme in 2022 or the scandals around the Kyoto-era Redd schemes.
Advocates of full decarbonisation argue that net zero is a waste of time and money given emissions are still created and must be paid for elsewhere.
Some believe there are signs that parts of corporate Australia are beginning to understand that real decarbonisation is more cost effective than paying for offsets.
“Offsets now pose an unacceptable risk to businesses, and the only way to decarbonise is to reduce emissions,” Fortescue’s chief climate scientist Shanta Barley told Renew Economy.
Following reports that more than 100 companies have quit the federal voluntary carbon credit market over integrity concerns, Barley says businesses are listening to the research showing offsets aren’t working, such as the increasingly maligned Human Induced Regeneration (HIR) schemes, and don’t want to be exposed to the risk.
“I think what’s happening is a natural progression [of what] we’ve seen that in every single country that has a cap and trade market. Look at the EU, China, California, all of them have set limits on offset use and that is because of the research that says if you rely fully on them, you will never fully decarbonise,” she says.
“The question is for these businesses is what comes after pulling out of offsets.
Grim outlook
But the global outlook for any climate initiative let alone the phase out of fossil fuels entirely is looking increasingly grim, just as Fortescue and its executive chair, billionaire Andrew Forrest who has long called net zero “a con”, accelerate the campaign.
Already, Australian companies are beginning to reconsider environmental targets in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s campaign against ESG, with Macquarie Group joining global financiers in refusing to commit to current in-house green targets, reported the AFR in January.
In December, the federal government delayed publishing the country’s new 2035 carbon emission targets following Trump’s election, likely until after the May election.
The Paris Agreement called for keeping the world to a warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius, a target which non-profit Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit suggests requires countries to meet net zero targets by 2050.
But the world may have missed that goal already.
Last week, two international modelling studies in Germany and Canada indicated that 1.5°C of global warming above pre-industrial thresholds is likely already underway, and the world entered a multi-decadal period of 1.5°C average warming in 2024.
In response to the studies from the Helmholtz Centre in Germany and Canada’s Alex Cannon, the world will need to make serious alterations to socioeconomic, energy and infrastructure systems soon that transcend ‘politics as usual’, said UTS Future Emergency Resilience Network director Dr Paul Read.
“The German paper further warns us that additional warming, towards 2 degrees, might still be avoided if rapid and stringent mitigation strategies are enacted today. Not tomorrow. Today,” he said in a statement.
Private companies must catch up
Private companies must begin to align their actions with real zero if the world has any chance to retain a liveable planet, The Australia Institute energy director Polly Hemming said in a statement.
“The current policy settings favour a handful of fossil fuel companies and undermine the efforts of those actors who are genuinely trying to decarbonise,” she said.
“Greenwashing in Australia is effectively sponsored by the Australian Government through its ongoing endorsement of carbon offsets, unproven technology and incentives to keep using and producing fossil fuels.”
Others say the economic benefits of abandoning the old economy and going full throttle into a new electrified future are obvious.
“There’s two transitions going on. One is what I call the general energy transition and the next is this idea of the energy transformation, and some countries are starting to get into a transformation mindset and that is unlocking a new frame of thinking,” says Enosi Australia cofounder Grant McDowell, who signed the Fortescue open letter.
He says the opportunity for Australia is in the “21st century electron economy” to supply the equipment and infrastructure for electrification and to enable clean technologies.
McDowell and his cofounder Steve Hoy came up with their own version of real zero – true zero – several years ago as part of the development of the company’s matching technology, which allows households or businesses to match their real-time demand with supply from a large scale wind or solar farm.
