WA Drops Interim Climate Targets as Emissions Climb 17%
SkimNews Take
State-level policy decisions, even when tacitly supported by federal leadership, can create a significant disconnect between national climate commitments and on-the-ground emissions trajectories.
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- Western Australia is the only Australian state without an interim target to cut pollution before 2050, and its emissions have grown 17% since 2005 while every other state has reduced theirs, with annual pollution up 4% in the latest data.
- Premier Roger Cook's government is preparing to drop a long-held but consistently delayed promise of legislated interim targets, with a leaked bill setting renewable energy and carbon capture targets only from 2035 and a green exports target from 2040.
- A Deloitte Access Economics report commissioned by Woodside found WA could miss net zero by 2050 by decades even without the contentious $30bn Browse gas basin, and would need renewable energy deployment 11 times faster than the past decade.
- The Albanese government has implicitly backed WA's climate position, rejecting a national gas tax last month and having its offshore regulator approve expansion of pipelines and wells at Chevron's Gorgon project, while the North West Shelf gas plant was granted a life extension to 2070.
- A verdict on Woodside's Browse development — which would allow drilling near Scott Reef, home to migratory whales, threatened turtles and more than 1,500 species — is expected before the end of the year, with experts citing a stronger-than-usual legal case for blocking it on environmental grounds.
- Cook has argued increased WA gas exports reduce coal burning in Asia, a position contradicted by leaked government advice obtained by Guardian Australia and the ABC that WA gas risks slowing Asia's clean energy shift.
Why it matters: WA is the only state whose emissions are rising and the only one without a legislated interim target, giving federal Labor no leverage to enforce reductions. With a Browse verdict due before year-end and Woodside's own modelling confirming the state is decades off net zero, the Albanese government must decide whether to block new fossil fuel expansion or let its WA allies set the national pace.
