“Forging the Future”? Why the coal industry may soon have to face some facts it can’t dodge

An expert panel led by former Chief Scientist Cathy Foley has released an interim report questioning whether Australia's official methane estimates from coal mining are accurate. The federal government currently counts fugitive methane from coal at about 5% of total national greenhouse gas emissions, more than triple the leakage from oil and gas. However, the Climate Council's 2024 analysis using aircraft and satellite data found that mines producing only 7% of Australia's coal output were emitting roughly half the nation's total methane pollution. The International Energy Agency has also flagged that official methane reporting globally may undercount what actually vents into the atmosphere, with the energy sector potentially the biggest source of error. The report comes as Coal Australia, a lobby group for major miners, runs a campaign called "Forging the Future" to maintain coal's role in communities.

Where this fits

This bears directly on the reliability and emissions claims underpinning Australia's energy transition. If coal's fugitive methane is being under-counted in official tallies, the actual emissions cost of keeping coal plants running for firming power during the renewable build is higher than policy makers have assumed. The gap also matters for comparing firm generation sources: a nuclear plant's lifecycle emissions are already the lowest of any source, and that advantage widens if coal's real methane burden is larger than the numbers used in policy decisions.

What it means

Accurate methane accounting could force a reckoning with the true cost of coal as a transition holdover. If official estimates have been understating fugitive emissions by a factor of two or more, Australia is burning a dirtier fuel for grid stability than the headline figures suggest, while simultaneously constraining the one firm, low-emission alternative, nuclear, that remains banned by law.