Federal Labor has binned hundreds of millions of Kyoto “carryover” carbon credits, permanently removing the option for them to be used in to shrink Australia’s emissions reduction task and shirk its climate responsibilities.

Federal energy and climate minister Cris Bowen announced the move on Friday, day two of the 10th Australasian Emissions Reduction Summit in Sydney, and confirmed it in person at the event.

“My colleague, assistant minister Jenny McAllister, has signed the instruction which cancels them, they’re gone,” he told the summit on Friday morning.

Australia’s surplus Kyoto credits, which had amassed to more than 700 million, have for years been a blight on Australia’s climate efforts, even when those efforts themselves amounted to the better part of nothing at all.

In 2019, the Morrison Coalition government had sought to use the credits, created under the Kyoto Protocol through soft targets and convenient accounting loopholes, to further minimise its already paltry climate mitigation efforts.