“Australia and its companies stand to lose both reputationally and economically if it continues to stay on the outer of international efforts,and throws good money after bad,” said Nigel Topping,who was appointed UN High-Level Climate Action Champion by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson as host of November’s COP26 climate talks in Glasgow.
“For the first time,there is now a fully unified G7 commitment to net zero by 2050,and Australia’s big client countries are stepping up their 2030 targets as well,” Mr Topping told a webinar on the business case for pursuing net zero targets,hosted by the UK high commission in Australia.
“There is no room whatsoever for any further investment in fossil fuels. And coal power must be phased out by 2030. Full stop.”
Nigel Topping,UN High Level Climate Action Champion.
“The IEA’s 1.5C report earlier this year could not have been clearer - there is no room whatsoever for any further investment in fossil fuels. And coal power must be phased out by 2030. Full stop.”
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Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said Australia will reach net zero as soon as possible,preferably before 2050,but Australia has not yet increased its goal of cutting emissions by 26 to 28 per cent by 2030 in the face of increasing international pressure in the lead-up to COP26.
Mr Topping told the webinar,which was attended by NSW energy and environment Minister Matt Kean along with executives from the energy sector,that there was “international confusion” about the Australian government’s position given that the Paris Agreement required all countries to update their targets by COP26,“reflecting ‘their highest possible ambition’.”
Mr Topping said it was rare for him to address an audience in a country that had benefited so much from natural assets that have fed the carbon-intensive industrial revolution of the 20th Century,“but that also sits happily (and some may say,unfairly) on many of the golden eggs that will feed the necessary and now-inevitable transition to a net zero world”.