Australia’s largest greenhouse fuel emitters might be required to slash their carbon footprint by as much as 6 per cent a 12 months below a key plank of the Albanese authorities’s marketing campaign to fight local weather change.
Federal Vitality Minister Chris Bowen is getting ready to strengthen a coverage generally known as the “safeguard mechanism”, which might compel the highest 215 industrial polluters that collectively trigger 28 per cent of the nation’s emissions to decarbonise their operations or offset their emissions by buying carbon credit.
Federal Local weather Change and Vitality Minister Chris Bowen.Credit score:Alex Ellinghausen
“A revamped safeguard mechanism will assist Australian business minimize emissions and stay aggressive in a decarbonising world financial system,” Bowen mentioned.
The safeguard mechanism, established below the previous Coalition authorities in 2016, applies to industrial amenities that generate greater than 100,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases a 12 months, equivalent to coal mine websites, energy vegetation, aluminium smelters and cement producers. Whereas the government-approved baseline emission limits are meant to be progressively lowered, the bounds on polluters to this point have been so slight that industrial emissions have truly elevated for the reason that mechanism was launched.
The Albanese authorities will start intensive business consultations throughout the nation on Thursday to hunt suggestions on how the mechanism must be designed.
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Among the many key areas of session will likely be setting “baselines” for brand spanking new and current amenities and figuring out indicative charges for baseline reductions.
Whereas the session paper states that closing decline charges wouldn’t be settled till different coverage settings had been finalised, it mentioned indicative decline charges had been anticipated to be “between 3.5 and 6 per cent every year”.
It should additionally search to determine “tailor-made remedy” choices to make sure emissions-intensive trade-exposed industries weren’t deprived. One strategy might be to offer taxpayer-funded grants for trade-exposed companies to shift to low-emissions applied sciences as an alternative of offering concessions throughout the safeguard system, it mentioned.
