Emissions in Australia on the Rise Again

Australian energy minister Angus Taylor is in the news after saying that the government was open to pursuing nuclear energy in the future to reduce emissions of CO² that have been rising again recently in the country. The increase led to Labor party members initiating a spirited debate with Taylor – officially the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction – on Tuesday.

Taylor pointed to the boom in the liquified gas industry as the main cause of rising emissions in the previous three years – exports of LNG have grown almost 20 percent over the previous fiscal year. But mining and transport emissions were also on the rise in Australia.

As government data shows, emissions in Australia have been increasing in 2016, 2017 and 2018 and they reached 534 million tons of C0² equivalent recently. While emissions per capita have been falling in Australia, the country has agreed to reduce its overall emission by 5 percent between 2000 and 2020 and another 26 to 28 percent between 2005 and 2030 as part of the Paris agreement.