Australia pushed back against a finding in a major climate report that fossil fuel power stations be urgently phased out, and requested the country be removed from a list of the world’s leading producers and consumers of coal, Greenpeace has said citing leaked documents.
Australia was among a handful of major fossil fuel exporting nations that sought to weaken the conclusions of the report, Greenpeace’s investigative arm, Unearthed, said on Thursday.
It released a report based on leaked documents related to the Working Group III paper on solutions to the climate crisis being prepared by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The draft IPCC report states coal- and gas-fired power stations need to be phased out and replaced by low- or zero-carbon electricity sources, according to Unearthed.
Phasing out fossil fuel power in the near term, the IPCC states, should be “accompanied by efforts to improve and test out options that will be important later on, including hydrogen or biofuels in cars and trucks, and fossil power plants, bioenergy power plants or refineries with CCUS [carbon capture utilisation and storage].”.
Australia also objected to the IPCC’s analysis that lobbying by fossil fuel companies had weakened action on climate change in Australia and the US in particular.
“One factor limiting the ambition of climate policy has been the ability of incumbent industries to shape government action on climate change … Campaigns by oil and coal companies against climate action in the US and Australia are perhaps the most well-known and largely successful of these”, the draft IPCC report states, citing academic references, according to Unearthed.
That issue of net zero emissions also features in the Unearthed report, indicating the use of “carbon offsetting” in allowing companies and countries to reduce their emissions without phasing out fossil fuels will feature prominently at the Glasgow climate talks that begin on 31 October
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