How Big Consulting Firms Undermine Climate Action
OP-ED by Claire Snyder
The Nationals and the Liberal Party have officially abandoned net zero.
This decision to ditch net zero was justified by an inaccurate report produced by Nationals-aligned Page Research Centre, claiming coal could deliver cheaper power than renewables.
To produce these claims, Page excluded the A$100 billion cost of building new “ultra-supercritical coal plants”, and assumed grid-upgrade costs were only relevant for renewables.
Page Research Centre’s report, criticised by Climate Energy Finance director Tim Buckley as being “totally deceptive” and “exceptionally biased”, worked its way straight into national policy debate.
This isn’t an isolated case. It’s part of a broader pattern where supposedly “independent” analysis is used to distort climate policy and public opinion.
Many of Australia’s biggest consultancy firms are key players in this harmful disinformation cycle.
Firms author reports built on flawed modelling, selective framing, or undisclosed assumptions to serve fossil fuel industry interests.
This practice is known as “data-washing” and it’s time to lift the veil – because it’s jeopardising our future.
Using their respected brands, the language of expertise and the appearance of rigour, Australia’s major consulting firms are being paid big fees to produce reports that bury skewed, questionable findings and manipulated data amongst otherwise reasonable findings.
The reports are presented as “independent analysis” and are frequently used in lobbying efforts to justify fossil fuel expansion. It’s one of the most harmful kinds of disinformation deployed by the fossil fuel industry, simply because it is so hard to spot. It’s sophisticated enough that it’s frequently accepted and reported as fact by journalists and referenced by policymakers.
To give another example
in 2023, EY authored ‘The Future Role of Natural Gas in Australia and the Region’ for Australian Energy Producers (AEP) – the peak body for oil and gas producers in Australia. AEP used the report to claim that, “Independent analysis confirms new gas supply is needed in all net zero pathways”. The report was then used to lobby the Federal Government’s Future Gas Strategy, which has directly influenced gas expansion over the last two years, and will do through 2050 and beyond.
Climate Integrity, the organisation I lead, recently published an investigation that found EY’s modelling relied on selective and unverifiable data, included non-existent scenarios, and presented three future gas pathways as “Paris-aligned”, despite all exceeding IPCC benchmarks for 1.5°C. Climate Integrity has asked the ACCC to investigate whether AEP’s use of EY’s report on the future of gas was misleading.
More recently, during the policy debate on the government's 2035 target, the Business Council of Australia (BCA) released a report prepared by consultancy firm McKinsey & Company , examining investment needs for different 2035 emission reduction targets (–50%, –60%, and –70% from 2005 levels). While intended to inform Australia’s 2035 Nationally Determined Contribution, the report suffers from serious methodological and analytical flaws, including a lack of transparency about its modelling methods, exclusion of the benefits from cutting emissions, misrepresentation of Australia’s starting point, and a neglect to model least cost abatement pathways.
The report’s figures have been quoted by Opposition Leader Susan Ley to justify her party's abandonment of net zero.
Similarly, at the EXA - Energy Exchange Australia conference, the Executive Vice President and COO of Woodside Energy , cited KPMG analysis (commissioned by Australian Energy Producers) in a false claim about the gas industry's contribution to the economy and employment. KPMG used implausible scenarios and selective modelling to overstate job creation and downplay environmental risks and costs. The report’s “findings” have been used extensively across social media, news sites, billboards, astroturfing websites, and government submissions to influence policy.
In November, Climate Integrity presented these examples of disinformation via data-washing to the the Senate Select Committee on Information Integrity on Climate Change and Energy and are calling for urgent reform to address harmful fossil fuel disinformation and lobbying. The recently established committee is a critical opportunity to expose the harm of climate disinformation and address it.
For the past two years, the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report identified ‘misinformation and disinformation’ as the world’s most severe short-term risk, with the top four long-term risks all relating to the worsening impacts of climate change – including extreme weather events, ecosystem collapse and natural resource shortages.
These risks are not separate: Disinformation campaigns by the fossil fuel industry entrench the politics of denial and incrementalism that delay the energy transition, undermine public trust, distort markets and policymaking, ultimately accelerating climate impacts and risks.
It is clear, then, that to decarbonise our economy and prevent the worst impacts of climate change for Australia, we must urgently address the sources of climate disinformation.
The Senate Select Committee and the Government should heed the advice of United Nations Special Rapporteur on Climate Change and Human Rights, Elisa Morgera, who recently called on governments around the world to criminalise fossil fuel disinformation and ban fossil fuel lobbying to protect human rights. Furthermore, if professional services firms from advertising, to law and consulting want to ensure their commitments to Net Zero and the Paris agreement remain credible to customers, to staff, and investors, they need to stop providing services to the fossil fuel sector that undermine the energy transition.
The stakes could not be higher.
The Government's recent National Climate Risk Assessment projects heat-related deaths will increase by ~400% in major Australian cities with 3°C of global heating. Every fraction of a degree of heating beyond 1.5c will be devastating to Australian communities.
Corporate behaviour that undermines efforts to protect people from climate harm in pursuit of profit should be met with the strongest possible accountability.
