Who are really Australia's top climate polluters?

Environment group the Australian Conservation Foundation released a top ten list yesterday.

Now as any human of the internet age knows, lists of things are almost as difficult to ignore as compilations of cats falling off furniture or GIFs of baby elephants.

Sadly, the ACF’s list isn’t as much fun.

The list, Australia’s Top Ten Climate Polluters, used public government data of greenhouse gases emitted in Australia.

The ten most polluting companies – led by Energy Australia, which generates electricity mainly through burning coal and gas – make up almost one third of the country’s entire emissions.

The report also juxtaposes those companies’ huge greenhouse gas footprints with statements they have made about climate change.

Many of them say they’re worried about climate change and greenhouse gas emissions (but not worried enough, some would fairly point out, to get out of the business of being major contributors to the problem).

Last September, the company in third place, AGL, bought the company in second place, Macquarie Generation, meaning that AGL is likely now Australia’s top emitter. But more about AGL later.

The ACF uses the established methodology of including emissions that companies generate from their operations, such as burning coal for electricity or running trucks on petrol.

But that doesn’t include emissions from the burning of fossil fuels that some companies extract and sell to other people.

If you did include those emissions then the top ten list would look very different.

Take for example miner Rio Tinto, which occupies fourth spot on the ACF list with emissions of 18 million tonnes of CO2 last year.

Rio Tinto emits greenhouse gases due to the energy-intensive nature of its mining, processing and smelting operations.

Rio Tinto’s coal mining operation is concentrated in Australia. In the company’s 2014 annual report, Rio Tinto says the burning of its coal by its customers (for both power and steel making) was responsible for a further 129 Mt of CO2. That’s quite a bit more than 18 Mt.

It’s also quite a bit more than the 20.8 Mt of CO2 emitted by Australia’s “top ranked” emitter, EnergyAustralia.

A very rough rule of thumb on coal is that each tonne burned for power emits about two and half times that in carbon dioxide emissions.

Glencore-Xstrata exported some 54 million tonnes of coal for power generation last year, but it is not on the ACF list even though the emissions from that coal are likely well above 100 Mt of CO2.

Neither is BHP Billiton on the ACF list - a company which exported about 21 Mt of thermal coal in 2014.

Yet assigning emissions to the companies that extract the fossil fuels is not a new idea.

A study in the journal Climatic Change released in November 2013 also assigned emissions to the corporations who had extracted the fossil fuels.

The report found that since the start of the industrial revolution just 90 companies caused 63 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions.

A study led by CSIRO scientists in 2010 found that emissions caused by the burning Australian fossil fuels exported overseas were more than double the level of emissions generated by burning fossil fuels domestically. Yet those emissions don’t appear on Australia’s national greenhouse accounts.

Altogether, Australia exported some 201 Mt of coal for power generation last year.

I spoke to Kelly O’Shanassy, the CEO of ACF, and asked her about the way the report was put together.

Internationally the way they account for pollution goes to the organisation directly responsible for it, so if we ship coal to India then the company there that burns it is responsible for the pollution. However, the company in Australia that dug it up has some responsibility because it is their product that has polluted the global climate and is causing the damage globally. So I think we might in future years include other scopes in that work. The companies are still making money from pollution.

O’Shanassy revealed the report marked the beginning of a shift in approach for ACF, which she said had previously played “the inside game” of working with governments.

Whilst we have had success in those approaches, what has happened is that governments have come in and just unwound the progress. It’s not going to work anymore to be just quietly asking governments to do the right thing. So the purpose of this report is to say – we are going to hold you to account and we are going to go out to all Australians and build a huge constituency in this country to make sure you do what Australians want you to do. If governments put the interests of polluters above those of Australians then we need to start to grow a force to support clean energy, not coal. This is definitely a shift in our focus.

She said they would also be working to build “community power” and to work with major financial investors to encourage them to get their money out of fossil fuels.

We respect the role of politicians, but we don’t think they are doing enough. There’s a great saying that the power of the people is greater than the people in power. I think the people in power forget that sometimes. We are going to remind them.

O’Shanassy said a key reason for putting the report together was to highlight the disparity between what companies do and what they say about climate change.

We have got to start holding them to account for what they actually do. It’s pretty easy to put greenwash out there. Business sustainability is about what you produce, not whether you change lightbulbs in the corporate office. If those companies produce coal then that has a massive impact and we are going to hold them accountable for that.

Many of these companies have actually increased their emissions in recent times. We will be putting out this report every year to track their progress.

That brings us to third-ranked AGL, which last September bought Macquarie Generation, the former New South Wales Government-owned coal generator occupying second spot in the top ten polluter list.

The ACF report places AGL’s statements of concern for climate change and emissions reductions with its position on Australia’s renewable energy target, which AGL says should be revised downwards.

AGL sent me a statement, saying its position was not contradictory and had research to back up its view.

The statement said there was “little point in maintaining the target without complementary policy that ensures older emissions intensive power stations are permanently retired” which was consistent with a policy goal of “decarbonisation”.

In effect, such policy would ensure that as new renewables are built, older emissions intensive power stations are removed from the system – ensuring a sustainable investment environment.

In a separate statement, AGL said climate change and greenhouse gas emissions were “a long term challenge requiring long term and lasting solutions” and the company recognised it was a large emitter with a “key role to play” in cutting its emissions.

The statement added the company had $3 billion worth of investments in renewable energy and 17 per cent of the energy it did generate came from renewables.

AGL has a range of programs and policies in place to reduce its GHG emissions, including improving the GHG efficiency of our operations and those which we have an influence on.

Now all that may be true.

But how does this sit with AGL’s decision to buy Macquarie Generation last year? Here’s what they bought.

MacGen is the largest producer of electricity in New South Wales. The assets include the Bayswater (2,640 MW) and Liddell (2,000 MW) black coal fired power stations, Hunter Valley Gas Turbines (50 MW), Bayswater B and Tomago development sites, Liddell solar farm, extensive coal handling infrastructure comprising rail unloaders and conveyor systems, 104 million tonnes of contracted coal and approximately 4.2 million tonne coal stockpile.

I have to wonder why a company concerned about climate change and cutting its emissions would buy another company with an annual greenhouse gas footprint of 20 million tonnes?