The federal government’s climate policy, titled The Plan to Deliver Net Zero: The Australian Way, was given short shrift at the global climate summit in Glasgow.

The summit saw the release of the Climate Change Performance Index, which assesses countries across four categories: policy, emissions, renewables, and energy use.

Countries are given one of five ratings from “very high” to “very poor”. No country was given an overall “very high” rating because “no country is doing enough to prevent dangerous climate change”.

The top five performing countries overall were Denmark, then Sweden, Norway, the UK and Morocco. The bottom five are Kazakhstan, followed by Saudi Arabia, Iran, Canada and Taiwan.

Overall, Australia slipped four places on the index from the previous year, when it was 50th, and it was the only country allocated a score of zero in the climate policy category, faring only slightly better in three other areas.

“The country’s lack of ambition and action has made its way to the international stage,” the report says.

Suzanne Harter, from the Australian Conservation Foundation, was one of seven experts who provided an evaluation for the climate policy category of the index, which looked at national and international policy performance.

“There’s no genuine strategy, no reasonable interim targets or any appropriate investment,” she told The Guardian. “There’s no phase-out plan for fossil fuels, no carbon pricing, and the technology roadmap relies on technologies that don’t even exist yet.

“There’s no national renewable energy policy and we’re one of the last OECD countries without efficiency standards for vehicles.

“Not only do we not have a policy, but the government is promoting the opposite direction. If anything, the government is giving more money to fossil fuels, such as with the gas-fired recovery.”

The index is produced by a coalition of climate change think tanks, including Germanwatch, NewClimate Institute and Climate Action Network International.