Western Australia, a linchpin of global fossil fuel supply, is set to miss its net-zero emissions target by up to a decade, according to modelling commissioned by the oil and gas giant Woodside. The Deloitte Access Economics report, which environmental groups have denounced as corporate propaganda, argues that the state’s current trajectory renders the 2050 goal unachievable regardless of whether the controversial Browse gas project proceeds. From Woodside’s perspective, the finding neutralises opposition: if the target is already out of reach, the additional emissions from a new export venture become a moot point.

Viewed against the broader industrial landscape, this regional failure mirrors a global one. The American NGO Global Energy Monitor reports that steel production, responsible for 11 per cent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, remains stubbornly reliant on coal. New blast furnace capacity is being built or announced at a rate of 319 million tonnes per year, five per cent more than in 2024, with net capacity set to grow by 88 million tonnes annually by 2035. The shift toward ‘green steel’ has been marginal, underscoring how the industrial backbone of the world economy resists decarbonisation.

Western Australia’s Labor Premier, Roger Cook, has offered a blunt defence of the state’s rising emissions. The globe’s the winner, he told reporters, arguing that WA’s exports of gas and minerals are essential to helping other nations decarbonise. Critics dismiss this as a convenient alibi for an economy still built on extraction. Analysts in London note that while the logic of comparative advantage has some validity, it ignores the accounting reality that emissions are a global stock, not a local ledger. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has long held that production-based accounting must be supplemented by consumption-based approaches, but no binding mechanism exists to credit exporting nations for downstream reductions.

The tension is set to intensify. WA has no state-level emissions reduction target before 2050, unlike every other Australian jurisdiction except the Northern Territory. With the federal government bound by its own 2050 commitment, Canberra may be forced to impose constraints on state-level infrastructure decisions. Meanwhile, the global steel industry’s continued reliance on coal suggests that even if WA’s gas exports displace coal in some markets, the net effect on atmospheric concentrations remains deeply uncertain. What is clear is that the gap between aspiration and trajectory is widening, both in the red earth of Western Australia and the blast furnaces of Asia and Europe.