Australia’s new target to cut climate pollution is undermined by fossil fuel expansion
For Australia’s national climate plans to be meaningful, they need to include an orderly phase-out of its fossil fuel exports
Published 22 September 2025
The Australian Government has set a new national target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 62 to 70 per cent of 2005 levels by 2035.
The 2035 emissions target forms the basis for Australia’s national climate plan – known as its Nationally Determined Contribution to the Paris Agreement – and has been submitted just in time for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s participation in the UN General Assembly in New York next week.
But when the Australian government is simultaneously approving new coal, oil and gas developments, we need to ask, will this target make any difference?
How does this target relate to Australia’s other climate plans?
The announcement builds on Australia’s existing 2030 target to cut emissions by 43 per cent, for which we are largely on track.
It is backed up by advice from the independent Climate Change Authority and economic modelling conducted by the Treasury.
At the same time, the government released six sector decarbonisation plans, providing a more detailed roadmap for how sectors with the highest emissions could achieve the 2035 target: electricity and energy, industry, resources, transport, built environment and agriculture and land.
The announcement comes hot on the heels of the country’s first-ever national climate risk assessment, which was released earlier in the week alongside a plan to support Australian communities to adapt to growing climate impacts.
The risk assessment shows the impacts of rising emissions are already affecting every aspect of Australians’ lives and livelihoods at current levels of warming of 1.3°C.
For example, the assessment estimates nearly 10 per cent of Australian homes are located in areas at high risk of climate-related impacts like fire, flood and rising seas, and are increasingly uninsurable.
Looking to the future, the assessment predicts the number of heat-related deaths in Sydney will increase by 444 per cent (under a 3°C scenario, which we are currently on track for), while it estimates the direct cost of floods, bushfires, storms and cyclones could reach $AU40 billion a year in 2050.
Is this an ambitious target?
For the first time, Australia’s emissions reduction target is not an exact number, but rather a range between a relatively less ambitious 62 per cent target and a more ambitious 70 per cent target.
Other countries, including Brazil and Canada, have also opted for this open-ended approach in their new climate plans.
This might reflect the growing uncertainty and volatility many governments face when navigating today’s geopolitics, and its knock-on effects on energy prices and climate policies.
It might also reflect a degree of uncertainty governments face in trying to determine the speed at which renewable energy infrastructure can be rolled out, the extent to which renewable energy costs will continue to drop, and the type of new or emerging technologies that could be deployed to further bring emissions down.
Australia’s new 2035 target, which includes the land sector, is comparable to Canada’s commitment (45 to 50 per cent below 2005 levels, excluding the land sector), but significantly weaker than the United Kingdom's target of 81 per cent below 1990 levels.
Several independent analyses, including by the Climate Change Authority, called for more ambitious emissions cuts than the targets the government has now locked in.
Over 500 Australian businesses called for a 75 per cent reduction, while an analysis by the organisation Climate Action Tracker estimated Australia would need a 2035 target of at least 76 per cent to be in line with the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C.
Environment
Saving the giants of the Australian forest
In this context, it is also good to remember the recent advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice, which stated that if a country fails to do its utmost to ensure its emissions target represents the highest-possible ambition, it may be committing an internationally wrongful act and be held legally responsible.
However, in practice, even achieving a 62 per cent reduction by 2035 – the floor of the new target range – signifies a transformational change in Australia’s economy and will require nearly halving the country’s emissions levels in the next 10 years.
Australia maintains one of the highest per-person emissions in the world, and unlike many other countries, most of the country’s gains in emissions reductions in the past decade have actually come from the land use and forestry sector due to a slowdown in land clearing and vegetation’s natural ability to absorb carbon, rather than a reduction in fossil fuel use.
This all points to the fact that Australia is still at the start of its decarbonisation journey and will need to do a lot of heavy lifting over the next decade.
Despite this, Australia is well positioned to make deep, rapid cuts to climate pollution across many sectors, with world-leading uptake of solar rooftops and home batteries, large reserves of critical minerals, a skilled workforce, and close economic and diplomatic ties with its neighbours across Asia-Pacific.
The elephant in the room: fossil fuel exports
Less than a week before announcing its national emissions reduction target, the Australian government approved an extension up to 2070 (20 years after Australia has promised to achieve net-zero emissions) of the North West Shelf gas processing facility in far north Western Australia.
The project is expected to emit over four billion tonnes of climate pollution – equivalent to a decade of Australia’s annual emissions.
This follows a trend of continued fossil fuel expansion in Australia, with at least 30 coal, oil and gas projects approved since 2022.
Australia is the world’s third-largest fossil fuel exporter and the world’s largest exporter of coal, with the emissions from our exported fossil fuels causing more than double the emissions of our entire economy. Australia’s domestic and exported emissions together make up four per cent of global emissions.
For Australia’s national climate plans to be meaningful, they need to stop any further approvals and expansions of fossil fuel projects and plan for an orderly phase-out of its fossil fuel exports.