In an effort to fulfill a key election pledge, the new Australian government formally committed on Thursday to a more ambitious greenhouse gas reduction target of 43% by the end of the decade.
The 2030 commitment comes as voters dumped at the May 21 election the previous conservative government which was stuck to a 7-year-old pledge to reduce by 2030 Australia’s emissions by only 26% to 28% below 2005 levels.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had informed in a letter to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change executive secretary Patricia Espinosa Cantellano of Australia’s new 2030 target, which comes in light of faces soaring electricity and gas prices much of Australia’s population is facing in part due to the Russia-Ukraine war.
The threat of blackouts hangs over large parts of southeast Australia for a range of reasons, including the unusually cold start of the winter in the Southern Hemisphere and unscheduled outages of aging coal-fired generations that are not being adequately maintained since they’ll be shut down within years.
According to Albanese, due to the previous administration’s failure to agree on a climate policy during its nine years in power, investment in Australia’s energy sector had been held up and businesses have been crying out for an investment certainty over a longer time frame than the three years political cycle.
His government could face pressure in a new, greener Parliament to adopt an even more ambitious greenhouse gases target and the legislation to enshrine the new target in law would be introduced to the new Parliament, which is to sit for the first time on July 26.
The attempts to reduce dependence on fossil fuels have been made a politically vexed issue since Australia is one of the world’s largest exporters of coal and liquified natural gas. The previous government was widely considered a laggard among wealthy countries in combating climate change.
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