Australia’s overall climate change performance poor - new report

Sydney, 15 July 2008

While Australia is more than on track to meet its Kyoto target, its overall climate change performance is poor compared to other leading developed countries according to a new report commissioned by leading environmental organisation WWF and international financial services leader, Allianz. Released in Australia today, Ecofys, an independent consultancy, has developed Climate Change Scorecards for the G8 countries as well as Australia.

Terry Towell, Allianz Australia’s Managing Director, said “a key measure in the Ecofys report’s Climate Change Scorecards is each country’s distance to Kyoto target.”

“The report shows that Australia is on track to meeting its existing international emissions reduction obligations with a distance to Kyoto target of -3.5%-points, which is the same as France and equal second behind Russia, which is somewhat of an exception.”

Table 1: Distance to Kyoto target

Country	Distance to Kyoto Target
Russia	-34.2%-points
Australia	-3.5%-points
France	-3.5%-points
United Kingdom	-2.6%-points
Germany	+2.8%-points
Japan	+11.3%-points
Italy	+16.4%-points
United States	+21.4%-points
Canada	+31.3%-points

However, distance to Kyoto target is only one of a number of measures that contribute to the Ecofys analysis to obtain a country’s overall Climate Change Scorecard result. Other measures include past emissions, share of renewable energy, emissions per capita, emissions per GDP, CO2 per KWh of electricity generation and energy efficiency in industry. Other measures include a country’s policies for the future in areas like transport, renewables and electricity generation.

The Ecofys report uses a ‘traffic light’ approach to signify overall performance and officially rank each of the G8 countries. Overall results and rankings are based, one third each, on:

• improvements since 1990 (eg, distance to Kyoto target, past emissions from 1990 to 2006);
• current status (eg, emissions per capita, emissions per GDP, CO2 per kWh electricity); and
• policies for the future (eg, renewables, electricity (eg emissions trading schemes), transport).
  

Table 2 shows the G8 ranking and also indicates where Australia would be positioned were it similarly ranked, as well as each country’s overall performance in terms of its ‘traffic light’ colour.

Table 2: Climate Change Scorecard – Overall Ranking

Country	Rank	Traffic Light
United Kingdom	1
France	2
Germany	3
Italy	4
Japan	5
Russia	6
Australia	Unofficial rank1
Canada	7
United States	8

Greg Bourne, CEO of WWF-Australia, said “in terms of overall Climate Change Scorecard performance, Australia is located in the ‘red zone’ along with Russia, Canada and the US.”

“Australia’s overall poor result indicates that the Government has some tough decisions ahead of it, not least of all in relation to the design of an emissions trading scheme, if it wants to raise Australia’s overall climate change performance.”

View the Climate Change Scorecard - Australia
View the G8 Climate Change Scorecards

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Allianz Australia

Best General Insurance Company 2006*
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The Allianz Australia Group operates in Australia and New Zealand. It is one of Australia’s largest general insurers, a leading private workers’ compensation insurer, and also provides life insurance.

Allianz Australia delivers a wide range of personal, commercial and corporate insurance products and services. AAL is proud to be of service to more than 2 million policy holders and over 50% of Australia’s top 200 BRW listed companies have some form of insurance cover with the group.

Allianz Australia offers a wide range of insurance products and services including car insurance, home insurance and Life insurance.

Allianz Australia has approximately 3300 staff. In 2007, the company achieved a gross written premium exceeding AU$2.4 billion and investment assets of approximately AU$5.5 billion. Allianz Australia Group is a wholly owned subsidiary of the worldwide Allianz Group, one of the world’s largest financial services companies.

Allianz’s commitment to social, environmental and economic sustainability has been acknowledged internationally by the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, which recognised Allianz as the most sustainable general insurer in the world in 2007. In Australia, Allianz is a member of the Greenhouse Challenge Plus program, which is a cooperative partnership between industry and the Australian Government that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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¹ Based on an assessment of the number of red, yellow and green ‘traffic lights’ in each countries scorecard it is possible to ascertain Australia’s comparative position had it been formally ranked against the G8 countries by Ecofys.