Who did better on emissions – Labor or LNP Coalition?

In an interview on ABC’s Radio National, opposition energy spokesperson Ted O’Brien made this claim:

“Under the former Coalition government, you saw emissions fall. Emissions in Australia are often talked about in the context of comparing to 2005 levels. Under the last Coalition government they went from 12% below 2005 levels down to 29%. Labor have been in office for three years now, they’ve flatlined. They haven’t budged. They came in after the success of consecutive years of emissions reductions under the Coalition, and Labor have failed. It’s flatlined. So any suggestion that the Coalition is not going to do more than Labor on emissions reductions? It doesn’t match up with the past performance whatsoever.”

You won’t be surprised to learn that I maintain a data set of Australia’s historical emissions data marked out by political party, precisely for these types of moments. First, let’s check the claim of a reduction under the Coalition:

The vast majority of the reductions from 2005 for both major parties come from the land-use sector, which features notoriously unreliable and suspicious data. So let’s exclude those for now. Emissions rose – quite significantly – under Abbot and under Turnbull, but fell significantly under Morrison, resulting in easily the longest downwards trend in Australia’s real emissions on record, under Scott Morrison.

Was this down to the Liberal party’s incredible prowess at deploying climate mitigation? Of course it wasn’t. Almost all of the reductions in that era came from Labor’s renewable energy target policy: a scheme the Coalition actively tried to kill in its entirety, during the Abbott years.

There are three core reasons total emissions have ‘flatlined’ under Albanese:

• – A stall in the drop of emissions in the power sector as the RET finished its operation in 2020
• – Rising transport sector emissions, post COVID lockdowns
• – Falling stationary energy sector emissions

As I wrote here at RenewEconomy, it was always clear that the RET would need an immediate replacement to maintain momentum – Labor deserve material criticism for having left the Capacity Investment Scheme too late. But it’s still a significant scheme resulting in a measurable change to investment levels in renewable energy, and with extra effort things could really get back on track.

With Labor, at least there is some hope of a renewed downwards trends in emissions – much more likely with a minority government and a teal / green crossbench. With the LNP, their claim to fame is very literally a Labor policy they tried and failed to delete. As the Climate Change Authority showed, their nuclear plan would result in a very significant rise in future emissions.

Only a few days until the election now. The battle around climate legacy won’t be central, but as we can see, it is still being mentioned and still being lied about.