Climate Analytics today released its analysis of Australia’s main political parties’ climate change pollution reduction targets, which show the Government Coalition’s target is the furthest away from a pathway consistent with the Paris Agreement’s agreed 1.5˚C warming limit.
A wealthy, educated and technologically advanced nation like Australia should be leading the world in transitioning to clean energy, not be stuck at the back of the pack. The transition of Australia’s electricity supply away from polluting fuels like coal has fallen well behind comparable countries and is not proceeding at the pace required to limit climate damage to relatively safe levels, new analysis by Climate Analytics has found.
Coal is the most carbon intensive fossil fuel and phasing it out is a key step to achieve the emissions reductions needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C, as enshrined in the Paris Agreement. Our research shows that the EU and OECD countries must stop burning coal for electricity by 2030, China by 2040 and the rest of the world by mid-century in order to meet commitments made in Paris in the most cost effective manner.
Since 2009 over a hundred Small Island Developing States, Least Developed Countries and many others have been calling for limiting global temperature rise to below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Placing the 1.5°C limit alongside the legally binding goal to hold global temperatures “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” in the Paris Agreement was a major victory for vulnerable countries. This page is an information pool for material around the 1.5°C temperature limit.
Local SLR allows you to see how much sea levels are projected to rise around the globe at different levels of warming. The projections are available at the local level.
Loss and Damage refers to the impacts of climate change that can no longer be avoided through adaptation or mitigation. It is one of the key issues for vulnerable countries, who have contributed the least to climate change.
They call on the developed world to provide support to cope with Loss and Damage, which otherwise threatens their economies, cultures and the lives of their people.
This page provides background material and key resources, including scientific studies and briefing material and blogs with updates on the policy process under the UNFCCC and under the IPCC.
The IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C contains the best available science to guide the development of Long-Term Low Emission Development Strategies (LT-LEDS), which are due to be submitted in 2020 under the Paris Agreement. One essential function of LT-LEDS is to provide a long-term 1.5°C consistent trajectory as an essential guide for increasing the level of mitigation ambition in the updating of NDCs, also due in 2020. Coupling the process of developing full LT-LEDS and submitting these by 2020 will make the process of further ramping up NDCs more coherent in the years to come.
Too often climate change conversations are isolated from a broad swathe of other issues that also are important for society as a whole. The key to systemic sustainable thinking is the realization that everything is connected, not only in natural ecosystems, but increasingly in our coupled human societal and economic systems as well. The Green New Deal is a rare example of proposing how to tackle a societal-scale set of challenges not by looking at individual components but by presenting a vision for the whole system.
This ABC Four Corners program investigates whether Australia is on track to deliver on the targets the nation has pledged to fulfil, and what effect the policies of successive governments have had on its emissions. Program features Climate Analytics CEO Bill Hare.
A damning report from international research firm Climate Analytics is lending substantial weight to the argument that Australia needs to improve its scorecard on clean transport. Pollution from light passenger vehicles and heavy transport is soaring, the report shows, up 57% in 2017 since 1990 and projected to rise to 82% from 1990 levels by the end of the decade.
“Australia is almost alone in not having any motor vehicle emissions standards for carbon dioxide and/or vehicle efficiency standards for litres per 100km. That means that vehicles in Australia are much more inefficient and more costly to run than in the US or Europe or Japan.” - Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics
This briefing note evaluates how political party positions in the 2019 Australian Federal election match against the needs and requirements of the Paris agreement.
Together with the Australian Conservation Foundation, we have been analysing Australia’s emissions profile and policies. This factsheet focuses on Australia’s electricity sector and outlines how it compares with other countries.
