09/07/2017

Greenhouse Gas Pollution Up, Data Released After FOI Struggle Reveal

Fairfax - Lucy Cormack

The federal government has answered calls to release greenhouse gas pollution data it had been sitting on since last year.
Energy and Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg released the quarterly updates on Friday, less than 24 hours after a Fairfax Media exclusive revealed documents confirming the department had failed to release data for the two quarters leading up to the end of 2016.


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On Friday, Mr Frydenberg announced Australia's greenhouse gas emissions had increased by 0.4 per cent in the September quarter and by 0.3 per cent in the December quarter of last year.
"Interestingly, electricity sector emissions fell by 1.3 per cent over the December quarter and fell 0.6 per cent in the September quarter as a result of the use of more hydro and less brown coal," Mr Frydenberg said.
"The government has adopted new, more effective, methodologies which improve the way satellite data is used to estimate land sector emissions and to incorporate the latest CSIRO research."
He said Australia was on track to "meet and beat" the second Kyoto 2020 target by 224 million tonnes.
The whereabouts of last year's pollution data was confirmed by documents obtained under freedom of information laws by the Australian Conservation Foundation, extracts of which were published by Fairfax Media on Thursday.
Despite being heavily redacted, a report and departmental correspondence confirmed advice that the data would be released "from March 31", with a release date indicated for "late on Friday 26 May". But that did not happen.
Australia's greenhouse gas emissions increased by 0.4 per cent in the September quarter and by 0.3 per cent in the December quarter of last year. Photo: Getty Images
"The government has been embarrassed into releasing this data, which shows pollution levels are still rising at a time they need to be drastically falling," ACF chief executive Kelly O'Shanassy said.
"It should not take an FOI request and a front-page story to get the government to be honest with the Australian people."
Federal Energy and Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg announced the release of the pollution data on Friday morning. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
In the absence of the government's National Greenhouse Gas Inventory, consultant Ndevr Environmental conducted independent estimates, which suggested Australia's emissions had risen sharply since the last quarterly data set was released last year.
However, on Friday, Ndevr said its own estimates for the September and December quarters had in fact been "a little conservative".
An extract from a departmental document obtained through an FOI request, regarding the release date of government pollution data. Photo: Supplied
"We're interested that our projections were a little bit under the government's," Ndevr managing director Matt Drum said.
Ndevr would need to make adjustments to account for the government's methodology changes, he added.
"We also picked up the decrease in electricity emissions in the December quarter, which was due to a massive amount of renewable energy generation. The results from the March quarter of this year will be very interesting, because we have estimated a big spike ... it was a shocker."
For the September and December quarter, Ndevr's estimates were 98.3 and 97.5 per cent accurate, respectively, when compared with the data released on Friday.
Ms O'Shanassy said it was positive to see electricity emissions declining, but it remained "difficult to tell if that would continue" with ongoing investment in coal.
"They talk about us meeting our Paris targets, but that is only because they have been able to bank pollution savings from past years under previous Kyoto agreements.
"That's why you can still have growing emissions and say you will still meet Paris targets."
According to the government's pollution data, last year electricity emissions decreased by 0.3 per cent, emissions from fuels in the manufacturing, mining and commercial sectors increased by 4.6 per cent, and emissions from the production and transmission of fossil fuels increased by 6 per cent.
Greens climate change and energy spokesperson Adam Bandt said the figures painted a "grim picture".
"Gas isn't a clean transition fuel. It's pushing pollution up and, if the figures keep rising like this, catastrophic global warming is a near certainty," he said.

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