Climate wars are heating up again as emissions and power bills fall

While climate wars are heating up again in the halls of parliament, the latest data shows that emissions are falling at significant rates and power bills are coming down on the back of the renewable rollout.

A climate-driven clash has sharpened in federal politics as the opposition aligns with One Nation on ditching goals to cut carbon emissions, walks away from its nuclear power ambitions and pledges instead to boost coal-fired power.

Energy Minister Chris Bowen on Friday released official figures that show Australia’s carbon emissions fell by 10 million tonnes in 2025, driven by the uptake of electric vehicles and renewables in the electricity grid. This represents a cut of 2 per cent for the year and a significant boost on recent achievements.

“The latest quarterly update is further proof that what’s better for the planet is better for your pocket, more of the cheapest form of new energy, more storage to back it up and lower emissions as a result,” Bowen said.

Australia’s 2025 greenhouse gas figures show the cut in annual emissions, the most significant since the COVID pandemic halted travel and slashed pollution, was driven by cuts in two of the highest-polluting sectors.

Emissions from the electricity grid were down 3.8 per cent as renewables displaced coal and gas, and transport emissions were down 0.6, which the government said was an historic milestone as the sector’s emissions have peaked and will now fall into the future due to rising uptake of electric vehicles.

However, the opposition has ditched its commitment to reaching net zero emissions and is now promoting the need to run coal plants as long as possible and to renegotiate trade deals with jurisdictions that also have legally binding climate goals, such as the EU.

The Coalition’s promotion of coal power also includes a rejection of the need for renewable energy and increasingly mirrors the position of One Nation’s energy policy.

One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce said the demolition of the closed Liddell coal plant by AGL this week was the company making “absolutely sure you cannot go back to coal-fired power” so it could raise its profits under the renewables rollout, which he criticised for generating sporadic power supply.

“There goes Australia’s prosperity,” Joyce said in a video on his Facebook page. “The end of coal-fired power, back to the intermittent swindle.”

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor this month said a Coalition government would “work with coal-fired power plant owners to keep them running as long and as hard as possible to get electricity prices down”.

Coalition and One Nation MPs will point to market analysts including UBS, which on Thursday said that “the retirement of coal-fired power stations will create a step change increase in electricity prices for each generator that retires”.

Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Ted O’Brien called for the government to reopen negotiations on the free trade agreement with the European Union, which includes a requirement to “effectively implement” the Paris Agreement.

The opposition in November ditched its commitment to net zero, which is a requirement of the Paris deal that was set as a legally binding pledge by the Albanese government in 2022, under the Climate Change Act.

Bowen has zeroed in on the opposition’s hardline energy policy, spurred by news this week that power prices would fall 5 per cent in NSW and Victoria.

The Australian Energy Regulator said the cuts were driven by record-breaking contributions from wind and solar power and a huge influx of batteries into the grid, which had delivered a “structural shift” where expensive gas power was increasingly replaced by renewables.

Over the past six months, renewables and batteries supplied more than 50 per cent of the nation’s main grid for the first time in history.

But it’s not smooth sailing. Expert firms including Rystad and Grattan Institute have said the Albanese government will fail to hit its ambitious target for renewable energy to make up 82 per cent of the grid by 2030, and figures released on Monday revealed private investment in the sector had fallen 50 per cent in 2025.

Australia’s first climate war ramped up under former prime minister Tony Abbott, who dismissed renewable energy objectives and opposed the then-Labor government’s emissions trading scheme in 2009.

Climate War 2.0 was fought in 2018 when then-prime minister Scott Morrison ditched the National Energy Guarantee and declared electric vehicles would “end the weekend”. It gained pace in 2022, when Peter Dutton replaced Morrison and in 2024 pledged a national rollout of nuclear power plants.

Significantly, this plan acknowledged the need for emissions-free nuclear power to tackle global warming.