The claim
Coalition MPs in normally safe, inner city seats have been under threat this election from independent challengers, with climate change a key line of attack.
One of these MPs is Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. When asked on ABC TV's Insiders about why the government wouldn't be changing its 2030 emissions targets from those set under former prime minister Tony Abbott in 2015, Mr Frydenberg said Australia needed to "do our part".
"We have now reduced our emissions by 20 per cent," he told host David Speers on Sunday, May 15.
"In comparison, Canada has seen emissions down by just 1 per cent, New Zealand by just 4 per cent, the OECD average just 7 per cent," he said.
Is he correct? RMIT ABC Fact Check investigates.
The verdict
Mr Frydenberg's claim is misleading.
The first reason is that the figures the Treasurer has quoted are from different years. Australia is sourced to 2020, New Zealand and Canada to 2019 and the OECD to 2018.
This inconsistency is particularly problematic as emissions figures to 2020 include large reductions as a result of the pandemic, and not government policy, while prior years do not.
Figures for 2020 are available for New Zealand, Canada and 32 of 38 OECD countries.
In line with Mr Frydenberg's claim, Australia's emissions in 2020 were 19.9 per cent lower than in 2005 when including emissions from land use, land-use change and forestry.
While New Zealand's 2020 corresponding reduction of 3.1 per cent is close to the 2019 figure of 4 per cent used by Mr Frydenberg, the same cannot be said of the others.
Canada's emissions including land use, land-use change and forestry were 9.7 per cent lower in 2020 than 2005, which is almost 10 times greater than the 2019 figure quoted by Mr Frydenberg.
The corresponding reduction for the 32 OECD countries which have reported figures for 2020 is a fall of 20.9 per cent on 2005 levels including land use, land-use change and forestry.
Though this figure doesn't include six OECD countries, it is clear that Australia's reduction is not roughly three times the OECD average.
A further problem is that Mr Frydenberg chose two measures that show Australia's record in a favourable light: a starting year of 2005; and the inclusion of land use, land-use change and forestry.
If the starting year is changed to 1990, when the United Nation's data begins, and if emissions from land use, land-use change and forestry are excluded, which experts have previously told Fact Check enables a fairer comparison between countries, the relative positions look very different.
On this basis, Australia has increased its emissions by 19.9 per cent, on par with New Zealand but underperforming Canada's 13.1 per cent increase and a far cry from the 32 OECD countries on a reduction of 12.9 per cent.
Previous claims
This is not the first time Mr Frydenberg has made this claim.
On April 23, the Treasurer told ABC News Weekend Breakfast: "We've seen our emissions down by 20 per cent on 2005 levels already, which compares to New Zealand at around 4 per cent, Canada at 1 per cent and the OECD average at 7 per cent."
Shortly after that interview, Fact Check contacted his office to ask for the source of his claim, but received no response on the record.
The Coalition has repeatedly made similar claims before the election campaign.
A Facebook post from the Liberal Party in November 2021 claimed a reduction of 20 per cent for Australia, 4 per cent for New Zealand, 1 per cent for Canada and 7 per cent for the OECD on 2005 levels. These figures accord with the figures cited in Mr Frydenberg's claim
However, buried in the fine print is the admission that the figures for these countries are from completely different sources with completely different finishing years.
Australia is sourced from the government's National Greenhouse Gas Inventory with a finishing year of 2020.
Meanwhile, Canada and New Zealand's data is sourced to 2019, and comes from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Finally, the OECD average is sourced from the World Resources Institute to 2018, which Fact Check has used as a source in a previous analysis.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development is comprised of 38 countries and is often used as a proxy for developed nations.
Fact Check has found two previous, similar, claims made by Prime Minister Scott Morrison on this subject to be misleading.
Most problematic in these claims was that there was no data available for 2020 for the countries the Prime Minister was comparing with Australia.
This, experts told Fact Check, was not a fair comparison, and awarded a large, pandemic-related reduction in emissions to Australia without taking that into account for other countries.
Furthermore, experts said large falls in emissions between 2019 and 2020 did not have anything to do with government policy.
Once again, Fact Check considers that to make a fair comparison, the same starting and finishing years must be used.
Keeping that in mind, it's important to mention that in the dataset used by the Liberal Party for the OECD, Australia actually increased emissions to 2018 by 3.4 per cent on 2005 levels including land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF).
This puts Australia behind the OECD average — a reduction of 6.6 per cent, which Fact Check has calculated using the data and roughly accords with the Liberal Party's figure.
The UNFCCC data used by the Liberal Party for New Zealand and Canada, for the period from 2005 to 2019 including land use, land-use change and forestry, shows Australia reduced emissions by 15.2 per cent — still ahead of New Zealand and Canada but by a smaller margin.
Newer data
As Fact Check has previously noted, Annex I signatories to the UNFCCC report their data on an annual basis to the convention's secretariat with a two-year lag. Data for 2019, for example, was reported by these countries in 2021.
Annex I countries are comprised of members of the OECD in 1992 "plus countries with economies in transition (the EIT Parties), including Russia, the Baltic States, and several Central and Eastern European States".
Since Fact Check tested Mr Morrison's last claim, all but two Annex I countries — Australia and Ukraine — have submitted their figures for 2020 to the UNFCCC.
This means that all but six OECD countries, which are not Annex I signatories — Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Israel, Mexico and South Korea — have data available for 2020. Annex I countries which are OECD members other than Australia have submitted this data in the secretariat's Common Reporting Format (CRF) tables.
Fact Check has sourced emissions data from these CRF tables for 31 Annex I countries which are OECD members.
For Australia, Fact Check has used the latest available calendar year figures from the government's NGGI.
On this measure, Australia with a reduction of 19.9 per cent is below the OECD countries which are Annex I signatories on 20.9 per cent. Fact Check's calculation of the OECD includes figures for Australia.
Australia is still in front of Canada, with a reduction of 9.7 per cent, but this figure is a far cry from the 1 per cent quoted by Mr Frydenberg.
New Zealand recorded a reduction of 3.1 per cent, which is much closer to the 4 per cent figure quoted by Mr Frydenberg.
However, as Fact Check has previously explained, the inclusion of LULUCF is often controversial in carbon accounting.
The UNFCCC recognises human activity through land use, land-use change and forestry as a carbon "sink", which can remove carbon from the atmosphere.
Planting trees through afforestation or reforestation, for example, stores carbon, removing it from the air.
Australia's Greenhouse Gas Inventory includes LULUCF.
But experts previously told Fact Check that there are sometimes issues with the accuracy of measurements, and not all countries have significant LULUCF inventories, which means international comparisons are not always fair.
Furthermore, they said that the inclusion of the category advantages Australia in international comparisons.
Excluding LULUCF in this dataset changes the picture: Australia is ranked behind New Zealand, Canada and the OECD average on this measure.
In fact, there are only two OECD countries which are Annex I signatories below Australia — Iceland and Turkey.
A different starting year
Mr Frydenberg referenced 2005 as his starting year in making his claim.
Experts previously told Fact Check that 1990, the year in which the UNFCCC data begins, is the best year to use as it is the year most countries began their emissions accounts, while acknowledging that all choices of starting years advantage different countries in different ways.
Australia's reductions including LULUCF were similar using 1990 and 2005 as the base year, but for some other countries there were large variations.
Including LULUCF, Australia with a reduction of 19.9 per cent on 1990 levels is above the OECD (a reduction of 14.5 per cent).
It is also above Canada and New Zealand which recorded increases of 25.3 per cent and 26.2 per cent respectively.
While Australia is above these countries and the OECD, its rank amongst OECD Annex 1 countries, at number 19, does not change whether the starting year is 1990 or 2005.
Excluding LULUCF, Australia recorded an increase of 19.9 per cent on 1990 levels, putting it just above New Zealand with an increase of 20.8 per cent, but below Canada with an increase of 13.1 per cent and the OECD with a reduction of 12.9 per cent.
What about the other OECD countries?
Complete data for 2020 is not available for the six OECD countries which are not Annex I signatories.
However, the Global Carbon Project, an international research project with a goal to "develop a complete picture of the global carbon cycle", holds data for carbon dioxide emissions for these countries.
Emissions of carbon dioxide make up around three quarters of world emissions, with the rest comprised of methane, nitrous oxide and smaller trace gases.
This data shows that each of these countries recorded falls in carbon dioxide emissions excluding LULUCF between 2019 and 2020.
In fact, the group of non-Annex I OECD countries recorded a larger drop in carbon dioxide emissions in proportional terms than their Annex I counterparts.
While these figures cannot be extrapolated to total greenhouse gas emissions reductions for 2020, they do demonstrate the impact of the first year of the pandemic on emissions in these countries.
The OECD's own data
The OECD also holds emissions data on member countries, with the data ending in 2019.
The organisation sources its data to the UNFCCC as well as well as replies to the organisation's State of the Environment report.
For non-Annex I countries, there is no country-level data for 2019. However, the OECD does provide an estimate of total emissions for member countries, excluding Israel.
It's important to note here that the data held for Annex I countries aligns with submissions these countries made to the UNFCCC in 2021.
Countries update their estimates for previous years every year, so the data may not align with the data sourced from countries' CRF tables above and is slightly out of date.
Nonetheless, it's the most complete and up-to-date estimate of OECD emissions that Fact Check was able to find.
Fact Check has used this estimate to calculate emissions reductions for the OECD. Reductions for Canada, New Zealand and Australia are also calculated from this data in the graph below.
On 2005 levels including LULUCF, the data shows a reduction to 2019 of 15.2 per cent for Australia, 10.6 per cent for the OECD, 4 per cent for New Zealand and 0.9 per cent for Canada. Notably, that puts Australia much closer to the OECD than Mr Frydenberg's claim.
The margin between Australia and those Mr Frydenberg compares it to is much smaller in this dataset.
Fact Check has made the same calculations using the OECD data but excluding LULUCF.
On this measure Australia increased emissions to 2019 by 4 per cent. The OECD decreased emissions by 9.6 per cent, while Canada and New Zealand both recorded small decreases.
Changing the starting years in this dataset does little to change these positions on either measure.
On 1990 levels, Australia is in front of New Zealand, Canada and the OECD when LULUCF is included.
But excluding LULUCF, Australia falls behind once again.
A different finishing year and dataset
A comparison of emissions records can also vary significantly according to finishing year and the dataset used.
As mentioned above, the 2018 dataset chosen by the Liberal Party to cast the OECD in a less favourable light does little to boost Australia's position when measured consistently.
Australia was one of 16 OECD countries whose emissions including LULUCF actually increased between 2005 and 2018.
Australia ranks not only behind the OECD but also well behind Canada with a reduction of 24.2 per cent.
Australia is still in front of New Zealand in this dataset, which increased emissions by 15.6 per cent.
Principal researcher: Elections editor Matt Martino
Sources
- Josh Frydenberg, Interview, ABC Insiders, May 15, 2022
- Josh Frydenberg, Interview, ABC News Weekend Breakfast, April 23, 2022
- Liberal Party of Australia, Facebook post, November 2, 2021
- RMIT ABC Fact Check, Scott Morrison says there are only four countries in the G20 with a better emissions record than Australia. Is that correct?, December 8, 2021
- RMIT ABC Fact Check, Scott Morrison says Australia's emissions record is better than the US, NZ, Canada, Japan and many European countries. Is that correct?, April 6, 2022
- World Resources Institute, Climate Analysis Indicators Tool, 2020
- UNFCCC, National Inventory Submissions, CRF tables, 2022
- OECD, Greenhouse gas emissions, September 2021
- Robbie Andrew and Glen Peters, The Global Carbon Project’s fossil CO2 emissions dataset, 2021
