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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

Unlike just about every other country in the world, Australia’s government actively helps some of our biggest carbon emitters make claims to consumers that they are ‘green’ or even ‘carbon neutral’.

For consumers, looking to sign up for household gas and electricity – it’s hard to know which companies to trust.

And more importantly, the system could help prop up fossil fuel projects that threaten to derail our emissions reduction targets.

Today, senior researcher at The Australia Institute’s climate and energy program, Polly Hemming, on how the government gives green credentials to fossil fuel companies.

It’s Tuesday, November 1.

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RUBY:

So, Polly, there are fossil fuel companies that make claims to actually operate in a carbon neutral way, or that they operate in a way that reduces their carbon footprint. So to begin with could you tell me a bit about those claims and the companies that are making them?

POLLY:

Yeah, sure. I mean, in Australia there's very few companies that are full stop that aren't making some sort of net zero carbon neutral claim. It's getting ridiculous.

The big ones, people would see, I think are from the energy retailers like AGL, Energy Australia, Origin Energy. People might not know that Telstra has recently become an energy retailer too and they're selling gas and coal fired electricity products that you've probably received an email, or you’ve seen a social media advertising saying we'll offset your emissions, you can offset your emissions from your energy use and be carbon neutral.

And Ampol is selling carbon neutral petrol to its business customers.

Archival tape -- Ampol ad:

“Our position on climate change is clear and well established. We support the Paris Agreements long term goal of limiting the increase in global average temperature to well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.”

POLLY:

So just to be clear. To my knowledge, there's no fossil fuel firm that has credibly demonstrated alignment with 1.5 degrees of global warming. Or even if you go through their sustainability plans, like I did recently with Woodside, Telstra and Ampol, not a lot of evidence that they're even reducing their emissions yet. Some of these really big fossil fuel emitters, they're all making some kind of carbon neutral claim and there's a range of tactics that the industry uses to maintain their business model or kind of protect it. But they're basically saying we're going to be doing as much to suck greenhouse gas emissions out of the atmosphere as we're putting in. And it's really, well, it's a way, not going to say a good way. It's a way of encouraging shareholders and consumers and government to continue supporting them.

RUBY:

Ok let’s talk about the offsets then - what are they and how are these companies using them to make these environmental claims?

POLLY:

Yeah, sure.

So explaining what an offset is, it's confusing, but at its most basic, it's just a way to compensate for putting CO2 or other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. So you have projects that reduce or avoid CO2, like planting trees or capturing gases from things like landfill. And if every tonne of gas they stop entering into the atmosphere, they’re given the carbon credit. And then a polluter like these fossil fuel companies, they buy that carbon credit and they basically say someone else has reduced emissions. So it's okay for us to put a tonne of CO2 into the atmosphere.

So in terms of a lot of the big ones, energy retailers or gentailers, the way that they say that they're going to be carbon neutral is by purchasing carbon credits and using them to offset the emissions from the products or other parts of their business.

RUBY:

Mm hmm. Okay. And so I think the obvious question at this point is, does that work? Does that, in effect, make these companies carbon neutral?

POLLY:

So in terms of fossil fuels, not really. According to science, it's pretty much impossible for any fossil fuel to not be worse for the climate.

So the term carbon neutral isn't copyrighted, it's not a legal term, anyone can use it. But in Australia, if you're making green claims, you should be able to back them up like we're pretty loose in Australia, but we're not that loose when it comes to environmental claims. So what a lot of companies are doing often in good faith is they seek out some sort of certification scheme and those schemes offer to do all the accounting for them, you know, check that accounting and then verify a claim of carbon neutrality. They sort of check your reporting or your emissions accurately and then they help you purchase carbon offsets. But where things get messy is because legally, if you're making an environmental claim, that doesn't stack up. But if some sort of verifying body’s given it a tick of approval, whether that's government or voluntary, then legally that gives you a lot of protection. And what's happening in Australia is that even though a lot of claims, climate claims by fossil fuel companies are just impossible scientifically, is that you have these certifying bodies.

Archival tape -- AGL ad:

“At AGL, we're working towards transitioning to a new energy future”

POLLY:

That have defined what it is to be carbon neutral and ridiculously that is likely to have more clout in court than actual physics. And even worse, the Australian Government runs one of these schemes.

Archival tape -- AGL ad:

“That's why we now offer the choice of carbon neutral electricity and gas certified by Climate Active. Climate Active is a government backed, carbon neutral certification programme in Australia.”

POLLY:

And it's certifying fossil fuel companies like AGL, Energy Australia, BP, Ampol and others for offsetting some of their emissions and then promoting them along with all these other businesses who may actually be trying to do the right thing as progressive climate leaders.

Archival tape -- AGL ad:

“Hashtag carbon neutral. Sign up today and don't forget to tell your family and friends to sign up also. Together, let's help shape a more sustainable future.”

RUBY:

Right, so the Australian Government is effectively endorsing this then? So can you tell me more about that, this scheme the Australian government runs?

POLLY:

Yeah.

And government I shouldn't have to say it is meant to be someone you should trust. You know, if the government says this is credible, then businesses and consumers should be able to believe that they shouldn't have to be like me, who spends hours trawling through sustainability reports to save these businesses are actually the progressive climate leaders that they're being promoted. It's like not knowing if you can trust that the Royal Mint is printing the right money.

You know, inherently, you should just know what you're getting from the government. And so, yes, the government is giving a little stamp of approval to these claims and not just that it promotes them at industry events in the media. The website of the scheme is quite gushy. So it's an aggressive endorsement. It's not just something that passively allows these companies to make these claims though that happens in other areas of policy too.

And Australia is quite unusual in that to my knowledge, it's the only country that has a certification scheme like these. There is a Chilean government carbon footprint scheme, but I don't think that its marketing approach is as enthusiastic. And Chile's also not a major fossil fuel exporter, so it just doesn't have as much skin in the game as Australia does.

RUBY:

We’ll be back after this.

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RUBY:

Mm. Okay. So Polly, it seems that Australia is really standing alone then globally in allowing these fossil fuel companies to, to certify their environmental credentials. Tell me why is that? I suppose what I'm asking is what would be in it for the Australian Government. Why would they want to do that?

POLLY:

Yeah. So these claims are being made globally. It's just most of these claims by industry are being made against voluntary standards. And just a quick anecdote before I answer your question. I was recently at a conference in Oxford with a lot of people who work full time on sort of trying to address the issue of fossil fuel production and supply, who've been working on this stuff, some for their entire careers. And of course, none of them are surprised that the industry's greenwashing or trying to make these claims. But there was an academic presenting and talking about using consumer law to tackle greenwashing, and he was putting up a picture of Shell's billboards for carbon neutral petrol and how he had successfully made a complaint with the the Dutch advertising watchdog, which resulted in Shell not being able to make that claim in the Netherlands anymore. And I put up my hand and said, okay, yes, great. I can see what you're saying. There is absolute merit in addressing that this way. But in Australia we've got the same billboards for Ampol. It's just the difference there is, there's a little logo in the corner that effectively says certified by government and that was very new to people. And then I sort of gave my presentation which laid all this out and sort of why this is happening in Australia and what the implications are. And that's the thing. We rely on government to keep industry in check. So what happens when it's the regulators and the laws that are kind of in on this game too? How do you get around that? And to answer your question, you know, what's in it for government? I think you need to, one needs to think about this in the context of Australia's decades long history of inaction on climate change. So Australia has really operated like a fossil fuel company itself. It's been a climate laggard and at worst it's been an aggressive blocker of international climate action. And the Government spent years greenwashing its own policies, which has set the standard for corporations in industries to do the same. But also industry wields enormous political power in Australia. We're totally captured. So what's in it for government is that if governments maintain support for the gas and coal industry, then it's really quite convenient for them to sort of hide behind the claims being made by Ampol and Woodside. They can point to the fact that Woodside has a climate target and say it's okay, we'll all get to net zero.

Archival tape -- Anthony Albanese:

“Net zero by 2050. This is a target that's been adopted by every state and territory government in the country, by all of our major trading partners in the developed world. It's a target that's been adopted by the big four banks, our major corporations, including BHP, Santos, Woodside, Telstra, Qantas and so many others.”

POLLY:

We had a green slide election this year and Labor's, you know, indicated that it's taking climate action seriously. But at the same time the Labor Government, like the Coalition, receives significant donations from the fossil fuel industry. It's already expressed support for gas and coal expansion.

So we have this very real risk in Australia that there's no appetite to actually force industry to reduce emissions and the Government will just sort of continue to point to these or certify, but also turn a blind eye to these misleading claims because it actually serves it very well.

RUBY:

Okay. Well, understanding that then, the power of the fossil fuel industry and the complicity of the Australian Government, are there other bodies that could and should be calling this out for what it is?

POLLY:

Yeah, that's a really good question and it's also tricky to answer. So people aren't oblivious to greenwash in Australia, they're not buying these claims even if they're certified. So for example, there's a group called Comms Declare that recently made a complaint to ad standards about Ampols claim of carbon neutral petrol. They're very active in this area. Other people are sort of cottoning onto it too, and even regulators know it's an issue. So the three financial regulators ASIC, APRA and ACCC are all making the issue of greenwashing a priority. The question is how are some arms of government as these organisations are going to actually crack down on greenwash when it's the other arms of government waving it through.

You need to acknowledge and address the interaction between government and the private sector. This is not just a climate policy issue. It's you know, this is a whole public and private sector governance issue. You know, how our climate policy is functioning is, I guess, a function of how our broader democratic and governance systems are functioning. So, you know, calling for things like the ICAC and integrity and transparency in donations is also really helpful to get to this.

RUBY:

Mm And Polly, is it possible to quantify the real world impacts of this? Because I mean, what it's allowing these companies to do is, is make these misleading claims about how environmentally friendly they might be. But does letting these companies make these claims actually, I mean, it obviously obscures what they're doing. But are we able to kind of say that there are flow on effects from that?

POLLY:

Yeah, it's a really good question. And the argument I often have with some people who say, are you just anti offsets? Aren't offsets better than doing nothing? But I can't quantify this. But sometimes I wonder if companies didn't have things like carbon neutral certification or didn't have the access to offsets, what they're really doing is laid bare so much more starkly. And so would that actually put more pressure on them to actually have to change their business model or actually have to do something legitimate? We know in Australia the sort of social licence aspect aside, real world, we've got more than 100 new fossil fuel projects in development nationally and the emissions from those domestically alone are going to be 150 million tonnes every year. So if fossil fuel companies and governments keep pretending business as usual is okay and keep giving social licence to fossil fuels, we're not going to meet our climate target and we keep contributing to the climate crisis. So those are just the domestic emissions that the emissions from exports from those gas and coal projects will be 1.7 billion tonnes every year, and that's about 200 coal fired power stations every year. The crazy thing is, is that there are actually very few beneficiaries from this system, except for a handful of fossil fuel executives and the people in government who support them. And so we really need to move away from rewarding this kind of performative inaction and actually towards a mandate of integrity and transparency that rewards absolute reductions and kind of exposes this system. And I think one way of doing that is not giving fossil fuel companies. I actually don't have a problem with some other parts of the private sector having access to offsets, but fossil fuel companies aren't using them to reduce emissions and using them to increase them, if anything.

RUBY:

Polly, thank you so much for your time.

POLLY:

Oh, pleasure. Thanks so much.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today,

Leftist political leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, is Brazil’s next president, after defeating far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.

The election has been dubbed one of the most important events of the 21st century, with the survival of the amazon rainforest, the place of Indigenous people and the integrity of democratic institutions becoming election issues.

Lula was once barred from running for office after an adverse finding by a judge who was an ally of Bolsonaro. His victory completes a stunning return to politics for the former president.

And…

The royal commission into robodebt has heard that the Department of Social Services had internal legal advice that doubted the lawfulness of the scheme in 2014, five years before the Coalition government accepted it was unlawful.

The government only officially sought legal advice from the solicitor general in 2019, after the scheme had been running for several years.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See you tomorrow.

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