Australia cleans up at home, but exported emissions keep growing: Maguire
By Gavin Maguire
LITTLETON, Colorado, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Australia's power sector drove total emissions from electricity generation to the lowest annual total this century in 2023, thanks to steep cuts to fossil fuel use and big jumps in clean energy generation, data from think tank Ember shows.
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However, Australia's total carbon footprint - as measured by the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted by the use of fossil fuels at home and through the combustion of exported fuels - likely remains on a rising trajectory.
Australia is the second-largest exporter of both thermal coal and liquefied natural gas (LNG), which account for over half of all electricity generation and more than 90% of all power sector emissions.
That means that on a per capita basis Australia's contribution to total CO2 emissions remains one of the highest globally, and any continuation of large-scale coal and gas exports will pose a major impediment to long-term pollution reduction goals.
POWER SECTOR CLEAN UP
Australia generated a record 87 terawatt hours (TWh) of clean electricity in 2023, which lifted the share of clean power in total electricity production to a new high of 38%, data from Ember shows.
At the same time, power firms cut fossil fuel use in electricity generation for the sixth straight year and drove total power sector emissions to the lowest annual total since at least 2000 - making good on commitments to help accelerate the country's carbon reduction efforts.
For 2023 as a whole, power firms lifted electricity generation from solar sources to a record 41.36 TWh and wind to an all-time high of 30.11 TWh, while electricity from hydro sources shrank slightly to 15.28 TWh.
Over the same period, electricity generation from coal dropped to a multi-decade low of 123 TWh, while natural gas-fired output was below 20 TWh for the first time since 2000.
Total emissions of CO2 from the use of fossil fuels in power generation dropped to around 128 million metric tons in 2023, which marks a more than 25% reduction from the levels seen in 2015.
EXPORT HEFT
Australia's carbon cutting efforts at home are at risk of being reversed by continued growth in emissions tied to the burning of Australia-sourced coal and gas in the power stations of other countries.
In 2023, Australia exported nearly 198 million metric tons of thermal coal - its third-highest total ever - and a record 182 million cubic metres of LNG, which placed the country second in global shipments of both commodities.
As a share of total trade, Australia supplied roughly 20% of both thermal coal and LNG shipped internationally last year.
The massive scale of Australia's power fuel exports means that the country ranked third globally in terms of total CO2 emissions per capita in 2022, according to Our World in Data.
Qatar, the world's largest LNG exporter, came in first with 37.6 tons of CO2 per person, while Saudi Arabia was second with 18.2 tons of CO2 per person.
At 15 tons of CO2 per person, Australia's emissions toll per capita compares favourably to Qatar's total, but is more than three times the global average of 4.7 tonnes.
Australia's total is also above that of other major fuel exporters including Russia, the United States and Canada, showing the country has an outsized impact on global emissions relative to the size of its economy, which ranked 14th globally in 2023, according to International Monetary Fund data.
Yet due to the importance of export earnings to Australia's economy, any substantial reduction in coal and LNG shipments is unlikely over the near term.
Coal briquettes were the country's top export earner in 2022, bringing in $98 billion, while gas exports ranked third behind iron ore at $63 billion, according to government data compiled by trendeconomy.com.
What's more, a vast majority of Australian coal and gas production is extracted exclusively for the export market, with more than 90% of Australian thermal coal and about 76% of Australian natural gas shipped overseas in the 2021-22 financial year, according to government data.
The coal and gas extraction and export sector is also a key employer in rural Australia, with more than 30,000 direct workers in coal mining and about 17,000 in the oil and gas sector, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The combination of valuable export earnings and strong job creation in key parts of the country mean the Australian government is unlikely to make any radical curbs on coal and gas exports any time soon.
And that means that even if Australian power producers continue to slash pollution and fossil fuel use in electricity generation, the country's total carbon footprint will remain one of the highest in the world.
<The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.>
(Reporting by Gavin Maguire; Editing by Jamie Freed)