An announcement today from the Albanese government that it would develop six sectoral decarbonisation plans kicks off what is expected to be a tough process of haggling between industry and other stakeholders about net zero timelines and supporting policy and incentives.
In a much awaited announcement, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen announced a year-long process of consultation to establish six specific net zero plans for electricity and energy, industry, the built environment, agriculture and land, transport, and resources.
The naming of those sectors comes at the same time as a major report revealed an alarming lack of engagement from Australian businesses about the growing level of carbon emissions caused by IT and data centres.
IT and data centres – not one of the priority sectors for decarbonisation –contribute about 1 per cent of global electricity consumption and up to 2 per cent of global carbon emissions, (equivalent to the airline industry).
However, the growth in demand for data, including the use of artificial intelligence, has the potential to significantly increase the energy consumption of data centre services to around 14 per cent by 2040, the report said.
Bowen said the government would develop the decarbonisation plans with industry, the climate movement, experts, unions and the community.
The Property Council, which has long advocated for a sector specific plan, said the built environment would expect to shoulder its load, noting that buildings account for 50 per cent of Australia’s electricity use and 23 per cent of all emissions through their operations.
“The technology already exists today to decarbonise buildings – but we must do this as a priority and at scale,” said the Property Council’s chief executive Mike Zorbas.
National Policy Director at the Property Council Francesca Muskovic told The Fifth Estate the built environment sector could move quickly but there was an important role for government to play in setting the right policies.
It could encourage change via its own procurement practices, and where costs for electrifying buildings and improving energy efficiency were still uncommercial, offer incentives such as rebates.
“For example, electrification retrofits in large complex buildings are expensive so maybe [there could be] rebates on capex [capital expenditure] … and incentive programs to ramp up home energy performance,” Muskovic said.
She said market signals were also needed to encourage the reuse of materials, not just at the end of the tail pipe but right through the supply chain.
No time for fantasies
In a speech he delivered today at the Australian Clean Energy Summit at the International Convention Centre in Sydney, Bowen said the 2050 plan devised by the former Coalition government was “a fantasy”.
“It assumes future technologies will do the heavy lifting without any effort or investment to bring them about,” he said.
Bowen said he had “listened to, and been struck by, advice from Australian and international investors that government-guided sectoral plans are vital for attracting billions in new investment in decarbonisation in Australia”.
The waste sector would be included in each industry plan via a focus on the circular economy, which would cut across all sectors.
Regarding 2035 net targets, he said he had written to the Climate Change Authority asking it to provide statutory advice under the Climate Change Act.
“I expect to receive this advice in late 2024. The sector plans will feed into both our Net Zero 2050 plan and strong 2035 targets, which we will lodge in keeping with our Paris commitments,” the minister said.
Kane Thornton tells it like it is
At the same conference, Clean Energy Council chief executive Kane Thornton attacked naysayers skeptical about Australia’s chance of reaching renewable energy and emissions reductions targets.
“They say it can’t be done. The usual suspects – the cynics, vested interests, the fossils and the fools – leap forward the moment the going gets tough,” said Thornton, pointing to the fact Australia is “charging toward 50 per cent [renewable energy] and aiming for 82 per cent by 2030”.
He said if Australia had listened to such skeptics, the nation “wouldn’t have built the hydro schemes, a bridge over Sydney’s harbour, or the overland telegraph that first connected us to the world”.
If Australia was to become a clean energy superpower, it would have to quickly decarbonise its own energy system.
We need kick start programs
Chief executive officer of the Australian Alliance for Energy Productivity Jarod Leak said Australia needed sector-wide kick-starter programs to drive the innovation, capability, capacity and competition required for retrofitting.
“The Australian government’s recently announced $100 million Community Energy Upgrades Fund for councils is a good example of this,” he said.
“And we need to ensure technologies and measures that can deliver big savings now are being included and encouraged.”
Sustainable architecture academic at the University of Technology Sydney Professor Leena Thomas welcomed the sectoral targets noting that “the cleanest form of energy is the energy we don’t use”.
“It is really good to see this emphasis on targets for reduction in energy use in buildings,” said Thomas.
“For too long there has been an assumption we can simply offset our levels of consumption using renewable energy. We need to mandate deep cuts to energy consumption in buildings with immediate attention to existing buildings.
“In the non-residential building sector this should particularly focus on B and C grade commercial buildings, and the big guzzlers such as hotels, data centres and retail.”
In the IT sector, which was not included in Bowen’s announcement, although sustainability managers believe Australia can’t meet their sustainability goals without reducing IT and data centre energy use, there is a lack of the detailed data to make decisions, according to the report released on Tuesday by data storage group Pure Storage, and UTS’s Institute for Sustainable Futures.
The report, IT & Data Centre Sustainability in Australia, details attitudes among more than 100 sustainability managers surveyed in April and May this year. It found that more than 70 per cent of respondent organisations had sustainability of data centres on their radar but only 9 per cent were fully considering it.