Decarbonisation in Australia: a new data dashboard to visualise State-by-State progress

Updated: 12 September 2024

Mahdieh Salari*, Magnus Moglia, Andi Nygaard

 Eco-Urban Research Team, Centre for Urban Transitions, Swinburne University of Technology

* Available for media contact (msalari@swin.edu.au)

Introduction

 Australia’s commitment to reducing carbon emissions has led to a variety of approaches across its states and territories, each reflecting unique priorities, challenges, and resources. This article showcases a dashboard created at the Centre for Urban Transitions at Swinburne university of Technology. The dashboard visualises decarbonisation performance of different Australian regions across five key dimensions: Energy, Transport, Circularity, Agriculture and Land-use. Each dimension represents an average of multiple indicators. Individual indicators are normalized so that they range from 0 (poorest performance) to 1 (best performance)[1].

The dashboard provides an overall index and ranking for each state and shows that no state or territory has excelled uniformly across all dimensions. This variation shows the complexity of decarbonisation efforts and highlights the need for tailored approaches to address the unique challenges of each state. At the same time, performance in individual states can offer valuable insights that can be leveraged by federal and state governments to accelerate decarbonisation.

The General Decarbonisation Trend

 Since the 1990s, carbon emissions in Australia have generally decreased, with a significant drop after 2011. However, decarbonisation performance varies considerably across the states. The Northern Territory has consistently had the highest per capita emissions, while the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) maintained the lowest until 2012. Tasmania has since emerged as a leader, achieving net-zero emissions in 2013 and reaching a 100% renewable energy target in 2020. Thanks to its vast forests, Tasmania has maintained negative net emissions since 2013, absorbing more carbon than it emits. Meanwhile, Victoria and New South Wales, home to Australia’s largest state economies, show moderate progress with slight reductions in net emissions.

Dimension-by-Dimension Insights 

1. Energy: All states have reduced energy emission intensity since 2016, but South Australia stands out with a 51% reduction and a significant decrease in energy consumption over the past decade.

   Victoria and New South Wales, while showing positive trends, still have room for improvement. Victoria has made substantial strides in both reducing energy emission intensity and managing consumption growth, positioning itself above the average. However, New South Wales, which falls below the average, faces challenges mostly in controlling consumption growth. In contrast, Queensland and the Northern Territory have shown minimal improvement –energy consumption is increasing, and emission intensity reductions is progressing slowly.

2. Transport: Transport emissions continue to be a significant challenge. New South Wales leads with the highest share of public transport use, followed by Victoria. In contrast, Tasmania has the lowest share of public transport. The Northern Territory and Western Australia have experienced significant increases in transport emissions since 2016, while Tasmania and the ACT have managed to achieve slight decreases. Regarding electric vehicle (EV) policies, the ACT and New South Wales score the highest, whereas Tasmania and the Northern Territory lag behind.

3. Circularity: In this dimension ACT leads with the highest reduction in waste emissions since 2016 and a 75% recycling rate. Tasmania has a low per capita waste generation, but also low recycling rate, resulting in stable waste emissions. Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland lag, with Victoria producing the most waste per capita and showing little progress in reducing waste emissions.

4. Agriculture: Agricultural emissions have generally decreased since 2016. The Northern Territory has seen the most significant reductions (about 30%), while the ACT has experienced a 21% increase. New South Wales and Victoria show modest reductions of around 3%.

5. Land-use: Land use can serve as a carbon sink, depending on management practices. Queensland tops this dimension with a score of 0.88, New South Wales and Victoria perform poorly, with significant gaps in land use emissions and tree cover loss. However, differences in geography and environments across the state requires care when interpreting and comparing these results.

   
   

Key Insights and Takeaways: Regional Leadership, Mixed Performances, and Challenges

South Australia shines as a leader in decarbonisation, primarily due to its strong performance in the energy dimension. However, there's still room for improvement in other dimensions, particularly in transport, where bolstering EV initiatives and enhancing public transport access could make a significant impact.

Tasmania stands out with its strong performance and remarkable achievement of negative net emissions since 2013. However, this does not mean the state can relax its efforts. Despite its achievements, Tasmania faces challenges in transport, land use, and agriculture, where performance is lower or emissions continue to rise, contributing over 8.36 million tons or tonns

of CO₂ annually from these sectors. The transport dimension is particularly concerning, as Tasmania scores poorly on the EV policy scorecard and public transport share.

Moreover, Tasmania has not legislated or mandated its net-zero emissions status, which poses a potential risk. The state’s current legislated emission target is a 60% reduction by 2050 based on 1990 levels, which could theoretically allow for an increase in emissions, potentially exceeding the carbon absorption capacity of Tasmania’s forests.

Victoria, ranked in third place overall, has made notable progress but needs to focus on advancing its circularity and land use strategies to improve its position.

New South Wales, standing below the average, struggles with increasing emissions in several areas, especially land use. Its performance in transport, however, remains impressive.

The ACT is making strides in reducing emissions in certain areas, but its performance in land use and agriculture lags behind. Notwithstanding the low share of agriculture in the ACT’s economy, decarbonisation progress is limited.

Western Australia finds itself below average, with rising emissions across most dimensions, signaling a need for more robust strategies.

The Northern Territory is faced with significant decarbonisation challenges, particularly in energy and transport, leading to its overall ranking of 7th (out of 8).

Queensland, despite its poor performance in energy, excels in land use, showing that even the lowest performers have strengths that can be leveraged for improvement.

Hence, a key takeaway from this analysis is that even the best-performing states require continuous monitoring and evaluation to ensure that emerging challenges are addressed and progress in one area is not undermined by setbacks in another. Australia's path to decarbonisation demands ongoing institutional and technological innovation to maintain and accelerate the general decarbonisation trend and achieve broader environmental goals.

[1] In practice, a high index value (close to 1) indicates that a state is generally performing well across multiple decarbonisation dimensions, while a low value suggests struggles in several areas. For more info about the calculation of the index check out the dashboards info page.