Australia could reduce its 2020 emissions to more than 30% below 1990 levels without resorting to carbon capture and storage or nuclear power, but only if it employs “potentially controversial” measures such as slashing beef consumption and requiring aluminium smelters to offset their emissions.

So says a study commissioned by Greenpeace Australia and released today.

Prepared by Mark Diesendorf, the study says energy sector initiatives can make a significant contribution but would not be sufficient on their own to deliver cuts of the required scale. It proposes additional measures including:

• requiring the highly energy-intensive aluminium smelting industry, which consumed 13% of Australia’s electricity in 2004, to offset all its energy-related emissions;
• reducing beef consumption by 20% and shifting instead to kangaroo and/or lower meat diets;
• ending land clearing by 2020 so there are no net emissions; and
• reining in population growth by reducing business and professional immigration by 50%.

The report says a greater uptake of renewable electricity coupled with an increase in gas-fired cogeneration could make the largest contribution towards a 30% cut. Ending land clearing would also make a major contribution as would improving energy efficiency and shifting from gas-fired heating to solar thermal heating in the commercial and industrial sector.

“Achieving an interim GHG reduction target of 30% by 2020 is vital to put Australia on track to reduce GHG emissions by at least 80% by 2050, widely accepted as the minimum reduction required by a developed country to avoid dangerous climate change,” the study says.

The study acknowledges some of the suggested measures are “politically challenging”. “However, these measures were chosen to be equitable and compatible with Australian society’s well being.”

The study also acknowledges there is a chance the aluminium industry would move offshore if required to offset its emissions.

“This is unlikely, considering the capital sunk in existing plant and the huge subsidies that the industry receives on electricity rates,” it says. “However, if the industry decided to move, the outcome would almost certainly lower its global GHG emissions, given the carbon intensity of Australian aluminium reduction. Overseas, most aluminium smelting users hydro-electricity, while in Australia most aluminium smelting uses coal power.”

The study excluded carbon capture and storage as an “unproven technology” and nuclear power. It did not include an economic analysis but says energy efficiency savings could offset “a large fraction” of the additional costs of renewable energy.

Paths To a Low-Carbon Future: Reducing Australia’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions By 30% by 2020 (Mark Diesendorf, dated September 2007, published October 2007)