Canberra set a 62 to 70 per cent 2035 climate target, then projected a 48 per cent cut

Australia's government adopted a 2035 emissions reduction target of 62 to 70 per cent below 2005 levels in September 2025. Two months later, on 27 November 2025, it tabled in parliament the document that says the target will not be met on the policies now in place.

That document is Australia's emissions projections 2025, published by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water alongside the fourth Annual Climate Change Statement required under the Climate Change Act 2022. The 2035 target is written as a multi year emissions budget covering 2031 to 2035 of 1,248 to 1,395 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. The projections put emissions over those five years at 20 to 34 per cent above that budget, and the single year outcome for 2035 at a 48 per cent reduction rather than 62 to 70 per cent. By 2040 the same baseline reaches 53 per cent.

The nearer target holds up better. The department projects a 42 per cent reduction by 2030 against a legislated 43 per cent, while coming in 3 per cent under the 2021 to 2030 emissions budget of 4,394 million tonnes, which is the figure that governs Australia's Paris Agreement obligation for this decade. So the 2030 commitment is met on a budget basis and missed by a point on the headline number, and the 2035 commitment is missed on both.

The projections carry a caveat stated in the document itself. The baseline scenario counts only measures implemented or with detailed design well progressed. It excludes the policies announced with the 2035 target in September 2025 and the abatement identified in the Net Zero Plan and its six sectoral plans. It does include the expansion of the Capacity Investment Scheme from 32 to 40 gigawatts announced in July 2025, the Cheaper Home Batteries program, and the repeal of Queensland's renewable energy targets.

The climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, put the gap this way in his speech to the House of Representatives on 27 November 2025: the 2035 target "is ambitious and achievable, it is not yet being achieved". He added that "it is normal for there to be a gap between projected emissions and a target 10 years in the future" and that new policies improve the outlook. The Greens leader, Larissa Waters, told the Guardian the same day that the projections were "diabolical" and that the target would be missed "by a country mile".

The statutory adviser had already said the pace was wrong. The Climate Change Authority's fourth Annual Progress Report, published 20 November 2025, found that to stay on track the rate of emissions reductions must double in the five years to 2030 and triple in the decade to 2035. It made seven recommendations, including streamlining renewable energy approvals, extending the Capacity Investment Scheme and a deep look at fossil methane.

The measured numbers are moving slowly in the right direction. The Quarterly Update of Australia's National Greenhouse Gas Inventory for December 2025, published in 2026, estimates emissions for the year to December 2025 at 458.9 million tonnes, down 2.1 per cent on the previous year and 24.5 per cent below the June 2005 baseline, with 58 per cent of the 2030 budget used. Preliminary estimates for the year to March 2026 are 457.7 million tonnes. Bowen told parliament that emissions for the year to June 2025 were 437.5 million tonnes, down 2.2 per cent. The two figures cover different twelve month periods and different vintages of accounts that are revised each year, so they are not directly comparable.

Nothing has closed the gap since. The Climate Change Authority's 2026 Annual Progress Advice consultation paper, published 17 June 2026 with submissions open from 2 July to 9 August 2026, proposes building annual reference pathways for each sector so that being off track can be identified year by year rather than in a decade. The same paper says a Safeguard Mechanism baseline trajectory aligned with the 70 per cent end of the target would tighten the scheme's constraint by about 17 million tonnes in 2035 relative to the 2025 projections. It also records corporate power purchase agreements for large scale renewables falling from 4 gigawatts in 2024 to 2.4 gigawatts in 2025, against battery capacity in the national electricity market doubling over the year.

What is not known is whether the policies excluded from the projections can carry 14 to 22 percentage points. The authority's advice is due to the minister in November 2026, and the government's review of the Safeguard Mechanism runs across 2026 and 2027. Until the next projections are published, the only official arithmetic on the 2035 target is the arithmetic that says it will be missed.