As Anthony Albanese competes in New York for investments in renewable energy, leading researchers warn the government is likely to fall well short of its 2030, 2035 and 2050 targets. The Net Zero Australia report by the University of Melbourne, University of Queensland and Princeton University’s Andlinger Centre for Energy experts say the targets are at serious risk because of policy shortcomings and bottlenecks, Perry Williams reports.

Writing in Business, two of the group, Michael Brear (Melbourne University) and Chris Greig (Princeton), praise Australia’s goal as commendable and point out that countries around the world increasingly are grappling with the growing gap between climate targets and progress.

The report comes as the Australian Human Rights Commission, in an extraordinary attempt at thought police meddling, urges Labor to regulate against “false” criticism of climate change ideology that is delaying action and sowing doubt.

Meeting the 2035 and 2050 net-zero targets, the Net Zero authors state, will require an increase in capacity of onshore wind and solar by around seven times and batteries by more than 25 times, along with new gas-fired generation to support reliability. “To connect these new renewables, we will also need to double the scale of the high-voltage transmission network,” they write. Nor will renewables alone be enough. Capacity of carbon capture and storage will need to be increased by at least 15 times, along with more carbon sequestration through reafforestation, and reduced emissions from fossil fuel production and animal grazing. All of which raises a question: who will pay?

Net-zero pathways are capital-intensive, the authors point out, with Australia needing capital flows to the energy sector to more than double from about $800bn under business as usual to more than $1.6 trillion over the next 25 years. Most of this capital must come from private markets, but government has a key role ensuring that these investments are bankable. Such costs are way beyond what the government has admitted. The team envisages average industrial energy costs rising by more than 60 per cent, and more in some industrial subsectors. Australia has a limited window to get its goals on track and it is important to be clear-eyed about “the speed and scale of infrastructure delivery, the challenge of bringing consumers and communities on the journey and alert to the vulnerability of industry”. It is also likely the world will not limit warming to 2C, ­elevating the need for climate ­adaptation.

Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen was less realistic than the report authors, appearing to go out of his way at the UN Climate Week summit in New York to confuse common sense with climate denial. New manifestations of climate denial, he claimed, included acknowledging that decarbonisation was difficult to achieve and was worthwhile only if other nations did the same. On the contrary, doubts about difficulty and efficacy recognise the need for rigorous cost-benefit analysis. And given Australia’s minor contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions, expecting other nations to act is common sense. From Paul Keating onwards, Australian governments have rightly demanded that our climate change response be calibrated to the actions of other nations. Mr Bowen, incredibly, also told the UN that paying an electricity bill was now optional in Australia because households could install rooftop solar and batteries. That defies the reality for most people and ignores the vast cost for taxpayers in funding government subsidies.

Mining billionaire Andrew Forrest also took things to another level, arguing that holding COP31 in Australia would restore hope in a younger generation that humanity could “end the spectre of global warning”. At the same time his company, Fortescue, has scrapped plans for hydrogen, pushed back its timetable for decarbonisation and grew its greenhouse gas emissions from mining by almost 300,000 tonnes in 2024-25 to 2.64 million tonnes, making it one of Australia’s biggest emitters. Contrary to the AHRC mindset, the mammoth cost of ambitious climate targets makes debate a must.

Adapted from an article first published in The Australian on 24 September 2025.