Queensland LNP has stopped trying to cut emissions, now it is refusing to even count them

The Queensland LNP government, having already scrapped the state’s renewable and climate targets, is now refusing to even count emissions, after pulling back from another nationwide commitment to collect data on transport infrastructure emissions.

The state has declared it will not collect data on carbon embodied in the materials used to build infrastructure needed for transportation, pulling out of a project approved last year as part of a ministerial forum with other states.

A statement from Brendan Morris, a spokesperson for transport minister Brent Mickelberg, says the state will continue to “meet applicable legislative and regulatory obligations.”

“The Crisafulli Government is committed to simplifying our approach to delivering infrastructure – not complicating it – to avoid unnecessary costs and to respect taxpayers’ money,” Morris said in an email.

Ministers from the other states and territories in Australia, and the Commonwealth, agreed last Friday to publish the new National Embodied Carbon Databook on the federal transport department website.

“Noting that Queensland will not be formally adopting the Databook,” last week’s communique of the Infrastructure and Transport Ministers’ Meetings (ITMM) said. 

The point of the databook, which was agreed to in May last year by the ITMM, is to create a reliable source of average emissions factors for materials used in transport infrastructure. 

“The Databook will equip stakeholders to estimate embodied carbon for projects and identify opportunities to reduce emissions through material substitution or design changes,” said the net zero transport plan issued by the federal government last year. 

The transport carbon databook opt-out is the latest in a series of Queensland reversals on previously agreed environmental or renewable energy commitments. 

In April, the state launched a last-ditch effort to oppose, or change, reforms to the federal environmental EPBC Act that have been under negotiation for years, asking to add the Taroom oil and gas basin to the fast track process – even though this has already been explicitly legislated against. 

And in May it declined to support key energy market reforms at another state and territory meeting.

Queensland LNP energy minister David Janetzski wanted to see more details on costs, benefits, and risks “before agreeing to any national proposal that impacts Queensland’s energy system and Queenslanders’ electricity bills.”

The state has also scrapped the previous Labor government’s renewable energy targets for 2030 and 2035, and has also implemented new planning rules complicating the process for many projects, and “called in” a number of already approved projects, putting some in limbo, already for more than a year in a couple of cases.

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