Carbon Footprints

At noon today AEST Australian Prime Minister Julian Gillard announced the details of her government’s carbon pollution pricing scheme, saying “The science is in, we know that our climate is changing.” Here’s the main points.

• A starting price of $23 per tonne of ‘carbon pollution’ (measured as CO₂ equivalent) to be paid by the 500 heaviest emitters and increasing by 2.5% over and above normal inflation, followed by a move to an emissions trading scheme in 2015,
• AU$9.2 billion of this money will go to assist many of the businesses and workers impacted by the plan,
• There will be tax cuts and pension increases to protect people from the inevitable price gouging by the major polluters, with a leap in the tax-free income threshold from $6k to $18k,
• AU$1.2 billion Clean Technology Program intended to drive energy efficiency in manufacturing and to support research and development,
• The closure of Australia’s most polluting electricity generators, to be replaced with gas-fired units by 2020,
• A $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation with a mission to to finance new clean energy technology,
• An Australian Renewable Energy Agency (AREnA) to manage $3.2 billion in clean energy investment,
• A target of 20 per cent renewable energy by 2020,
• and agriculture to be excluded from paying the carbon price in the immediate term.

All in all this is a massive leap forward for Australia with an emissions reduction trajectory being locked in at 5% reductions on 2000 figures by 2020, building up to n 80% reduction on 2000 figures by 2050. While personally I would have liked to see a more aggressive trajectory, with 20% below 1990 levels by 2020 and complete decarbonisation of the economy by 2050, the political realities in Australia simply ruled this out.

The full details are available on cleanenergyfuture.gov.au. — DS

Technorati Tags: Australia, carbon emissions, carbon price, carbon tax, CO2

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 10th, 2011 at 9:08 PM and is filed under Alternative Energy, Climate Change, Forces for Good. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.