White Paper: Framing Australia’s Energy & Climate Policy to 2030

Following the release of the Climate Change Authority’s Special Review, which proposed a ‘toolkit’ of measures to meet Australia’s emissions target – but made few detailed recommendations – in this White Paper, we examine Australia’s abatement task through to 2030 and the policy settings needed to meet Australia’s emissions target.

IN SHORT:

• As state and federal policymakers begin to explore policy development, we present the RepuTex 2030 Energy & Climate Policy (ECP) Tool, an interactive web tool enabling users to build a customised policy pathway to meet Australia’s 2030 target.

• The ECP Tool is available in four versions, including a free edition for public use and three subscriber versions. We apply the ECP Tool for illustrative purposes below.

• Accounting for updated economic assumptions and state and federal policy, including new state RETs in ACT, SA, QLD and VIC, we estimate an Australian greenhouse gas abatement task of approximately 1 billion tonnes of CO2-e (2020-30), a 55% downgrade on government estimates (2,215 Mt).

• National emissions will need to be reduced by 8 to 9 million tonnes of CO2-e (Mt) annually to meet Australia’s 26 per cent emissions reduction target by 2030.