Labor will announce its 2035 emissions target this week. Here’s how it could shape Australia’s next decade
Announcements to reveal ‘scary’ risks posed by climate crisis and how the government intends to combat it
The scale of the Albanese government’s climate action ambition for the next decade will be set this week with the anticipated release of its 2035 emissions reduction target.
The target is one of several expected announcements revealing the “scary” risks posed by the climate crisis, what the government intends to do, and how.
Climate risks
The first announcement, expected on Monday, will be the release of the national climate risk assessment, a long-promised analysis of the economic and environmental risks posed by the climate crisis.
People familiar with it have said it is “intense and scary”, and confronting even for those who work in the area. It will be accompanied by a national climate adaptation plan, a high-level framework for managing a changing climate.
Developed by the Australian Climate Service and the climate change department, work on the risk assessment has included highly detailed modelling of future damage, estimates of the number of people who could be killed by worsening heatwaves and development of a mapping tool that forecasts flooding risk in suburbs across the continent.
Sources say that under some scenarios, even large systems – such as electricity networks, transport routes, food production and the financial sector – could struggle to cope.
Cutting emissions
The biggest announcement will be the government’s 2035 emissions reduction target, expected on Thursday or Friday after cabinet signs off on it.
Like the risk assessment, this has been significantly delayed. It was initially promised by February but postponed until after the May election while the government waited on advice from the Climate Change Authority, a government agency chaired by former NSW Liberal treasurer Matt Kean.
The government is expected to announce the target at the same time it releases a barrage of reports, including the Climate Change Authority’s target advice, a plan to reach net zero by 2050 and an analysis of what can be done to cut pollution in six sectors of the economy, including electricity and energy, transport, industry, agriculture and land, resources and the built environment.
New policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions are expected to be announced alongside the new goal, which would build on the government’s 2030 target of a 43% reduction on 2005 levels.
The latest annual emissions projections, published in November, suggest the government is on track to hit 42.6% – just shy of the legislated target.
Setting targets
The 2035 target matters not just in Australia, but internationally. It will be submitted to the UN as part of the country’s “nationally determined contribution” – what the government says it can do to help the world meet goals in the 2015 Paris agreement. The climate change minister, Chris Bowen, has indicated Australia is likely to submit a range rather than a single number.
The Paris deal includes a commitment that the target must be more ambitious than the existing 2030 goal – there can be no backsliding – and reflect the country’s “highest possible ambition”. The Climate Change Authority released a consultation paper in April 2024 with its preliminary assessment, finding a cut of at least 65% and up to 75% “would be ambitious and could be achievable if additional action is taken by governments, business, investors and households”.
Since then, the authority has been consulting experts and interest groups and has undertaken modelling to refine its advice. It is understood its board – including scientists and business figures – reached its final position last week, and the report is yet to go to government.
The authority is required to consider what the best scientific advice says Australia should be doing to keep alive the goal of trying to limit global heating to 1.5C since preindustrial times. It should also consider the international political and diplomatic landscape, the economics of what’s possible, the pace of technological development and what is considered socially deliverable.
From a scientific view, analyses have found Australia should make a percentage cut of somewhere between the high 70s and 100% – actually reaching net zero – by 2035. Australia’s Pacific island neighbours have also stressed the need for their more developed friend to be as ambitious as possible – and to stop approving new fossil fuel developments.
Some of these analyses – including by the thinktank Climate Analytics and the Australian Conservation Foundation – have detailed estimates of how cuts could be made to meet a target of at least 75%. Climate campaigners generally believe the target range must include 75% to be credible.
But other experts, such as Frank Jotzo, the director of the Australian National University’s Centre for Climate and Energy Policy, have argued that even a target of 65% would be ambitious, given it would require pollution to be cut in half over the next decade. He argues that new policies behind the target are ultimately more important than the number.
Business organisations are politically influential and vary markedly in their positions. One group of about 500 that includes Fortescue, Atlassian, Ikea and Unilever has argued strongly for 75%. Others have emphasised the cost of action and pitched for a goal in the 50s.
The Business Council of Australia issued a veiled warning about setting a target in the 60s or 70s, publishing modelling suggesting between $395bn and $530bn of capital investment would be needed.
International action
The picture across developed countries is mixed. The US (about 10% of global emissions) has abandoned the field on climate action. The UK has a 2035 goal equivalent to a 78% cut below 2005 levels, and the EU is expected to land in the 70s. But Canada and New Zealand have set much lower goals (45-50% and 51-55% respectively).
As an emerging economy, China – the world’s biggest national polluter – has not yet set targets on the scale of those nations that developed earlier. Its current goal is that its pollution will peak by 2030.
Some analyses suggest that might have already happened as it builds extraordinary amounts of renewable energy and uses less coal power (even as it continues to build new plants). There is a focus before the Cop30 climate conference in Brazil in November on what Beijing will promise to do by 2035.
In an interview last week, Bowen pointed to a 2021 calculation by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that suggested global emissions needed to be cut by 60% between 2019 and 2035 to keep the 1.5C goal on the table. That translates to a 68% cut below 2005 levels – the baseline used by Australia.
But global heating has accelerated since then and 68% is a planet-wide average. Developed countries such as Australia would have to do more.