Emissions drop again, fuelling hopes Australia’s hit a tipping point

• Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have fallen 2.1% over the past year, reaching their lowest level since the COVID-19 period, with the decline largely driven by cleaner electricity generation replacing fossil fuels in the grid.
• Rapid growth in renewable energy—especially wind and solar—combined with a surge in battery storage (both home and grid-scale) is enabling more renewable power to be used during peak demand and reducing reliance on gas and coal.
• Transport emissions are also beginning to fall as electric vehicle uptake accelerates, while overall progress toward Australia’s 2030 emissions targets is improving but still requires faster action in heavy industry and infrastructure build-out.

Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have dropped, showing signs of a turning point in the country’s most polluting sectors.

Emissions are at their lowest point since the COVID pandemic shut down the economy, dropping 2.1 per cent over the year to December 2025, according to the latest national greenhouse gas inventory update.

The significant drop is largely driven by clean energy replacing fossil fuels in electricity generation, but transport emissions also continued to fall, year-on-year, for the second quarter in a row since the pandemic.

That drop doesn’t yet account for the surging demand for electric vehicles (EVs) since the start of the year.

The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries reported EV sales have doubled in the past year, hitting a record high of 20 per cent of new car sales in May.

That figure more than doubles again if you include hybrid and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, with the share of all electrified vehicle sales hitting 46 per cent.

“Our transport activity is going up; however, emissions have started to fall,” said Anna Malos, a climate policy expert at the Climateworks Centre, an independent research body at Monash University.

In the first quarter, transport sector emissions declined by 0.6 per cent, a small but telling figure according …

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Original article and photo by "ABC News"