• The world’s leading energy agency has outlined the steps required by Australian politicians and companies to reach net zero emissions.
• The report has been met with support by a core group of Australian business leaders supportive of ASX-listed companies dropping their fossil fuel projects.
• The report further highlights the lack of climate action contained in last week’s Budget.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

The world’s leading energy agency has outlined the steps required by Australian politicians and companies after assessing a “narrow and extremely challenging” pathway to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

The report comes barely a week after the Federal Budget allocated almost nothing towards climate action and as the Morrison government continues to push ahead with a gas-led economic recovery.

In a statement accompanying the report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), Fatih Birol, the agency’s executive director, said countries needed to frame clean energy as a net benefit to the economy, not an economic burden as is regularly done in political debate.

The net zero target set by more than 100 countries as part of the Paris agreement, which the government said it would “preferably” like to achieve, requires advanced economies like Australia to have a zero-emissions electricity grid by 2035.

The report suggested wealthy countries should phase out coal-fired power plants by the end of the decade, the sale of new petrol and diesel cars should be banned by 2035 and global investment in clean energy should more than double to US$5 trillion (AU $6.4 trillion) per year by 2030.

Its recommendations serve to further highlight the distance between last week’s Federal Budget and other countries, particularly after US President Joe Biden singled out Australia’s lack of action at a virtual climate summit in April.

The government announced on Wednesday it would spend $600 million on a new gas-fired power plant in New South Wales.

In statements around climate change since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Morrison has said he backs a “gas-fired recovery” from the coronavirus pandemic, and has gained support from federal and state governments that have continued to back the expansion of coal mines and gas fields.

Greens leader Adam Bandt told The Guardian Australia that the report was “a code red alarm call” to Liberal and Labor to phase out coal by 2030.

“In balance of power after the next election, the Greens will kick the Liberals out and rely on this report to push Labor to phase out coal, oil and gas,” he said.

The Australian business community has also responded, with several Australian shareholder activists telling The Guardian that it was now imperative ASX-listed companies drop their fossil fuel projects.

Dan Gocher, a spokesperson from the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, said the report had “enormous implications” for companies involved in oil and gas production.

“Those oil and gas projects that have yet to be sanctioned, including Woodside and BHP’s Scarborough project, Santos’ Narrabri project and Origin’s Beetaloo project, are simply not consistent with a net-zero-by-2050 pathway,” he said.

Bruce Robertson, a gas analyst with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said it was worth noting that the report was reviewed by major oil and gas companies including Shell and BP, signalling that the report was not biased against fossil fuels.

Robertson also said the report suggested the trade in global liquefied natural gas would fall by 60% between 2020 and 2050.

Gocher added that the report “makes a mockery of the Australian government’s so-called gas-fired recovery,” and also pointed to its recently announced forced to cut tens of thousands of staff.” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>subsidies for fuel refineries and non-existent electric vehicle policy.

A spokesperson for the Emissions Reduction Minister, Angus Taylor, responded that there was a growing gap between “rhetoric and what’s happening in the real world” on climate.

“Australia’s track record is one of delivery and meeting and beating our commitments,” the spokesperson claimed. “Many countries with very ambitious targets do not have the same record of delivery.”

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