CANBERRA, Feb 8: Australia is on track to meet its Paris Agreement climate commitments five years ahead of schedule, a study has found.
“Australia is installing renewable power per person each year faster than any other country, helping it to meet its entire Paris Agreement emissions reduction targets five years early,” according to an Australian National University (ANU) study published on Friday.
As a result, the nation is on track to achieve its goal of reducing emissions by 26 to 28 percent on 2005 levels by 2030 in 2025.
“The electricity sector is on track to deliver Australia’s entire Paris emissions reduction targets five years early, in 2025 – without the need for any creative accounting,” lead researcher Andrew Blakers said in a media release on Friday.
“Australia is on track to reach 50 percent renewable electricity in 2024 and 100 percent by 2032.”
“The Australian renewable energy experience offers real hope for rapid global emissions reductions to preserve a living planet.”
Blakers and co-researchers Matthew Stocks and Bin Lu acknowledged that Australia’s carbon emissions increased by 3.4 megatonnes in the year to June 2018 due to liquefied natural gas exports but said that growth would be moderate.
They found that the net cost of achieving the Paris target would be zero because renewables were replacing expensive fossil fuels.
“The price of electricity from large-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) and windfarms in Australia is currently about 50 Australian dollars (35.5 U.S. dollars) per Megawatt-hour (MWh), and steadily falling,” Stocks said.
“This is below the cost of electricity from existing gas-fired power stations and is also below the cost of new-build gas and coal power stations.
“Nearly all of the new power stations are either PV or wind. We anticipate that this will continue into the future, provided that energy policy is not actively hindering development.”
(AGENCIES)
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