Australia is a First World country known for its tropical beaches, lush forests, and incredible wildlife. With a population size of over 25 million people and being one of the largest economies in the world, Australia is held to a higher standard in its ability to maintain environmental sustainability within its economy and to be a global benchmark of 'greenness'. Since First World countries are often regarded as 'wealthier' based on a measure of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP), they are often considered to be in a better position to adopt more eco-friendly practices across their various industries. One metric often prevalent in the conversation of sustainable practices is that of CO2 Emissions from energy production. The less CO2 by-product an organisation produces, the 'greener' that organisation is considered. Likewise, countries with lower national CO2 emissions are often regarded as 'greener' and more sustainable. With increasing interest towards environmental conservation and deprecation towards non-eco-friendly industry practices, countries around the world are facing mounting pressure to be considered 'competitively green'.
Let us take a look at various regions. This map displays the amount of CO2 produced per capita by various countries globally, from 1860 to 2020. Australia's CO2 emissions in 2020 was approximately 15.4 megatonnes, which was 229% times more than the global average for CO2 that year. Understandably, various other First World nations produce notably greater CO2 emissions than the global average.
Greenhouse Gases are gases in the Earth's atmosphere that trap heat.
It is largely accepted that these gases are the major causes of climate change.
Greenhouse Gases comprise various gases like Carbon Dioxide (CO2) gas, Methane, Nitrous Oxides (NO2), and Water Vapor, amongst others.
The pie chart on the right illustrates the top 3 main Greenhouse Gases. We can see that CO2 has largely been the biggest contributor to this.
But what's producing CO2?
As seen in our illustration, the primary
sources of Australian CO2 production are Cement,
Coal, Flaring, Gas, and Oil.
By scrolling through the various years, we can see that Coal
has long been the major source of our CO2 production.
Looking at 2020 alone, Coal is responsible for over 40% of Australia's CO2 production,
producing 159.8 megatonnes.
To understand where Australia is heading in its 'green' targets,
we must first look into the past to examine how the sources of CO2 production have evolved.
From the chart on our right, we can see that there has been a tremendous effort to diversify our energy sources over time.
As Australia gradually transitions away from fossil fuels like Coal,
in favour of 'greener' sources with lower carbon output, we will observe some improvement over time.
Let us not forget that fossil fuels like Coal produces the most CO2 for good reason.
Burning Coal produces on average, more energy per unit mass than other sources and is considered one of the simplest
natural energy resources.
From the figure on the right, we can see that over the last century,
Coal has long produced at least double the average CO2 produced by all sources,
which suggests that is also used the in the most.
Evidently, with mounting global pressure, there has been remarkable effort and improvement by various regions around the world
in reducing their CO2 emissions.
In the figure on the right, we can see that Australia, as part of Oceania,
has made been competitive in reducing its CO2 emissions over time.
This is promising for Australia as it promotes itself as a global ambassador for 'greenness'.
This visualisation was created by Nicholas Lim All data was retrieved from Our World In Data and Kaggle.