Currently, the country is surpassing its Kyoto target, which limits Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions to 108 percent of 1990 emissions within the regime’s first commitment period which ends in 2012.
However, data from a new report by the climate change department show the country will produce 690 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalents by 2020, which represents a 24 percent increase compared with emissions in 2000. By 2030, emissions will have grown by as much as 44 percent.
The report looked into more than 30 policies and measures to assess the contribution of existing policies in reducing Australia’s carbon pollution.
Greg Combet, minister for climate change and energy efficiency, said that there is thus a need to put a price on carbon emissions to achieve real reductions.
The government has pledged to cut emissions by at least 5 percent of year 2000 levels by 2020. This target is less ambitious compared with the European Union’s emission reduction target of 20 percent from 1990 levels to be achieved within the same time frame.
And yet, given the growth of the Australian economy and huge reliance on coal for electricity, which supports about 80 percent of the country’s demand, a 5 percent cut still means reducing emissions by 160 million tons by 2020.
«Clearly more needs to be done, and that’s why we need a carbon price, soon,» Mr. Combet said in a statement.
Without a carbon price supporting long-term investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency, Mr. Combet fears more new coal-fired plants will be built in the future, jeopardizing the government’s target of generating 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources in 2020.
Rocky road toward carbon price
Carbon pricing could work through a cap-and-trade scheme which Australia’s former prime minister Kevin Rudd planned to use in setting limits on emissions and making polluters pay for permits to emit greenhouse gases.
But Mr. Rudd shelved the scheme until 2013, blaming the delay on political opponents that have blocked the legislation three times in the Senate. The country’s cap-and-trade bill planned to price carbon emissions starting at 10 Australian dollars per ton.
The country’s current prime minister, Julia Gillard, said in November that her government will decide this year on how to charge the country’s top polluters for the carbon gases they emit.
In her statement posted on the Sydney Morning Herald, Ms. Gillard said setting a carbon price will make the transition to a low-carbon economy “smoothly, efficiently and in the cheapest possible way”
Opposition leader Tony Abbott strongly disagrees. Mr. Abbott said to ABC news that he condemns a carbon price as a great big new tax to be imposed on consumers.
He proposed to meet the 5 percent reduction target by 2020 with a $3.2 billion Australian dollar plan that does not cap carbon emissions but instead proposes direct actions such as planting trees.
«What won’t work is the ongoing denial and obstruction of the Federal Opposition, led by Tony Abbott,” Mr. Combet said in a statement.
“It’s time for him to admit that his Direct Action policies would cost Australians more and are incapable of meeting our abatement challenge or transforming the economy.»
