Factchecking five Coalition claims about net zero, from power prices to the $9tn cost

Are you trying to make sense of some of the big claims made by Liberal and National party MPs for abandoning their support for Australia reaching net zero emissions by 2050?
We’re here to help.
Will the net zero emissions target cost taxpayers $9tn?
No.
This claim has been made repeatedly by the Nationals leader, David Littleproud, and other Coalition MPs, including 15 times in an interview on Thursday.
The alleged source is Net Zero Australia, which is a partnership between academics at the universities of Melbourne and Queensland and Princeton University in the US. But, as Guardian Australia reported, Net Zero Australia issued a statement saying the cost estimates in its report had been misrepresented.

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The academics found the additional cost of building an energy system to reach net zero emissions by 2050 would actually be about $300bn. That calculation did not factor in the cost of adapting to the climate crisis or repairing climate-related damage if emissions were not cut.
Many studies have found the cost of inaction would be far more than the cost of acting.
The $9tn figure refers to the potential capital investment between now and 2060 for energy developments within Australia, and for export developments.
This investment would create industries and a huge number of jobs. Net Zero Australia said the “large majority” of the investment should be underwritten by overseas customers, not Australian taxpayers.
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Has the net zero target caused electricity price rises since 2022?
No.
The Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, said on Thursday that power bills had increased about 40% since Labor was elected – a figure apparently drawn from a report by the Page Research Centre, a thinktank with links to the Nationals. She suggested the increase was due to investment in renewable energy built to meet emissions reduction targets.
Many long-term energy industry analysts disagree. Tony Wood, a senior fellow at the Grattan Institute and former Origin Energy executive, says the price increase had “almost nothing to do with renewable energy”.
Power bills spiked by about 20% in 2022-23 after Russia invaded Ukraine, pushing up global gas prices. Gas power was already the most expensive form of electricity in the national grid, and routinely set the price for other types of generation.
The rise was also caused by a jump in coal prices after flooding at east coast mines. And there was less generation in the power grid – and therefore less competition to keep prices down – due to outages at ageing coal power plants.

Part of the increase after 2022 can also be explained by a rebound in prices after they were suppressed during the Covid-19 pandemic, when demand for electricity was down. Inflation has an impact each year.
Asked on the ABC’s RN Breakfast what evidence he had that renewable energy was making electricity more expensive for consumers, Dan Tehan, the shadow minister for energy and emissions reduction, said: “Because people are seeing it every single day in their electricity bills.”
Which isn’t an answer.
Paul Simshauser and Joel Gilmore, from Griffith University’s Centre for Applied Energy Economics and Policy Research, found that the opposite was true – that the cost of generating electricity could be up to 50% higher had Australia relied solely on coal and gas and not pursued renewable energy.
Dylan McConnell, a senior research fellow at the University of New South Wales, says the power grid needs to be rebuilt, and that will be more expensive than plants built decades ago.
The key question is: what is the cheapest option to minimise price rises in developing a reliable future grid? Analyses by government agencies and academic institutions have consistently found it is renewable energy plus firming support, even as costs estimates evolve.
Could Australia stay in the Paris agreement if it abandoned emissions targets?
Technically, yes. It won’t be forced out.
But it would be in clear breach of what was agreed in the French capital in 2015.
Article 4.3 of the Paris agreement says countries will make successive commitments that “represent a progression” and “reflect its highest possible ambition”. That is, they must become more ambitious and there can be no backsliding.
The main goal of the Paris agreement is to hold average global heating to well below 2C above preindustrial levels, and to “pursue efforts” to limit it to 1.5C.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has looked at what meeting the 1.5C goal would involve. It found it would need a 45% global emissions cut between 2010 and 2030, and reaching net zero “around 2050”.
The Coalition position is obviously at odds with this. Ley is promising a government she leads would “remain committed” to the Paris agreement while working against what it was meant to achieve.
Some people might interpret that as leaving the agreement in all but name.
Did emissions come down while the Coalition was in power?
Yes. But not due to its policies.
According to government greenhouse accounts, annual emissions dropped about 21% between 2013 and 2022.

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The majority of this was due to changes in how much carbon dioxide was being absorbed by forests and the land. It increased significantly. Experts say this was mainly due to state governments and market pressure reducing the amount of land-clearing and native forest logging as well as a major drought ending – not federal policy.
Remove the role of nature from the equation and climate pollution fell only 3% over the nine years. This was mostly due to a surge in renewable energy investment to meet a 2020 renewable energy target that was expanded when Labor was in power.
Famously, the then prime minister, Tony Abbott, considered scrapping the target in 2014, but did not have the votes in the Senate to do it. Instead, the target was reduced.
There was also a sharp drop in transport emissions during Covid-19 as people drove and flew less. Presumably, the Coalition does not claim credit for this.
Otherwise, emissions from transport, heavy industry, manufacturing and mining increased.
Can carbon capture and storage (CCS) help cut emissions quickly?
There is no reason to think so.
Tehan said CCS – capturing emissions and injecting them underground – could “provide immediate relief when it comes to emissions reduction”.
The evidence says otherwise. Governments have committed billions of dollars over decades to support CCS developments with little result.
According to a recent report by the Global CCS Institute, there are 77 projects in operation, mostly to justify ongoing use of fossil fuels by capturing a fraction of the pollution at a site.
Combined, they are claimed to capture up to 64m tonnes of CO2 a year.
If they deliver, that’s about 0.17% of global emissions. And they don’t always deliver.
Also: nearly half of these CCS projects are used for “enhanced oil recovery”, which means the greenhouse gas is pumped underground to help extract more oil – a fossil fuel.
• Adam Morton is Guardian Australia’s climate and environment editor and writes the Clear Air newsletter