PLEA Network

12 December 2019, Renew Economy, No legal or moral basis for Australia’s Kyoto accounting fudge, new analysis shows. New analysis of Australia’s international climate commitments has argued there is no legal, or moral, justification for the use of surplus Kyoto-era emissions credits to meet Australia’s 2030 emissions reduction targets.A new report, authored by research group ClimateAnalytics and published by the Australia Institute, has argued that the premise of Australia’s Kyoto surplus is built on a mix of convenient emissions accounting arrangements and a disregard for previous commitments made by successive Australian governments. ClimateAnalytics’ analysis breaks down the convenient accounting that has worked in Australia’s favour, including the inclusion of Australia’s land-use emissions in baseline calculations, soft targets adopted under international treaties, and the use of averaging across compliance periods. “Any claim of overachievement under the Kyoto Protocol does not represent any real emission reductions but is technical only, resulting from anomalies under Kyoto accounting rules and deliberate accounting choices Australia made. The same is true of Australia’s 2020 Cancun pledge,” the ClimateAnalytics report says. Read more here