WEBSITE (CONVERSATION): COP29 just ended in Baku and the election of Donald Trump has thrust the global response to climate change into the spotlight. Meanwhile back home, Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen this week reported that Australia is on track to meet its 2030 emissions reduction target as part of the Paris Climate Agreement.
But the government would not say whether it would reveal its 2035 target before the election. It indicated that it was awaiting advice from the Climate Change Agency. The head of that body, former New South Wales Liberal Party treasurer Matt Kean, joins the podcast to talk about COP, Australia’s energy transition and the challenge of preparing that advice on the year’s target 2035.
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Kean said COP gave him more motivation than he expected:
I came to COP in an extremely pessimistic mood. After Trump’s election victory, he essentially called climate change a hoax. He said his energy policy would be “drill, drill, drill.” And it’s clear that there will be no American leadership in the climate discussion over the next four years. So I came with low hopes.
But I left optimistic and positive, and the reason for that is because this is the most important climate conference in the world. This is the world’s largest climate conference. It brings together people from all over the world, be it governments at the national or local level, businesses, private enterprises, NGOs. And the message I got from all those people was, yes, there was a setback, but the effort required and the determination to continue on the trajectory that we were on was very, very clear.
This is an opportunity to collaborate and come up with new ways to tackle this challenge. I mean, the world joining together in the global effort to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels is one of the great challenges of our time. No one country can solve this problem alone and my message to your listeners is this: the fight for a cleaner, safer and better planet is by tackling the Dangerous climate change is larger in scale than one election cycle in one country at a time.
Australia had hoped to receive agreement at the COP to host (along with Pacific countries) COP 2026 but the decision has been postponed until June. Kean describes where things are going and why This is an important event not only for Australia’s reputation but also for its economy:
I have come to believe that there are clear signs that other countries may withdraw from the race. But obviously that didn’t happen. We went to Baku to hear the Turkish president make a strong and convincing argument for why Türkiye should be the host of that COP. And honestly, I think that surprised some people.
But […] Hopefully Australia will be chosen as the country that can host this world-class event and will bring many economic benefits.
More than 70,000 people flocked to Baku. So regardless of the importance of bringing people together to collaborate and try to solve this challenge, it is still a huge economic benefit for the city and the country that hosts it. I mean, I can’t think of many events that would attract 70,000 people to Australian shores.
In the Climate Change Agency’s progress report, published this week, Kean highlighted the significant opportunity for new renewable energy capacity:
Take, for example, one of the recommendations around using more business rooftops to meet our energy needs. Australia has the potential to add 28GW of solar capacity using Australian commercial and industrial rooftops. This is larger than the size of the New South Wales energy system alone.
[The Australian Energy Market Operator] predicts only 5% of commercial and industrial customer demand will be met by batteries and rooftop solar, compared with 50% for households. So we have a huge opportunity to install more capacity into the grid, make sure that our system is more reliable and can manage the exit of these unreliable coal-fired power plants without causing major additional costs to consumers.
As for when Australians will learn about our 2035 targets and the authority’s advice on them, Kean said Australia would need to submit its targets before next year’s COP, but I don’t know when there will be advice from this agency:
First let me say what matters most is the quality of the target and the strength of the evidence and analysis that underpins it. So we want to give Australians confidence that Australia’s next target is ambitious, achievable and in our national interest.
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As far as we know, all countries intend to submit their next targets before the next climate conference in 2025. We will take our advice in due course to Australia submitted before that time.
I will not rush the domestic political agenda. I have an independent voice in this process and, as I said, what matters most is the quality of the target and the strength of the evidence and analysis that underpins it.