Federal Government proposes a price on carbon.

[bulldogproud2]

Although that article was not written by Wayne Swan but by the ABC's Environment Journalist Sarah Clarke, I do not believe that there is any law against Members of Parliament writing in the media. After all, Christopher Pyne has his own radio segment every week.

Thanks, though, for producing an article that does indeed show the true picture of how well the Carbon Tax has been accepted by business.

Cheers

[fish]

Full steam ahead for California carbon trading

How can you force firms to cut down their carbon emissions? Put a price on them. That's the idea behind carbon trading, which got a boost last week when California launched the world's second-largest carbon market. Other new and improved trading systems are springing up around the globe and could eventually work together.

We need to cut greenhouse gas emissions as efficiently as possible to prevent dangerous climate change. So, the argument for carbon trading goes, we should be able to trade the right to emit: firms that cut emissions can profit by selling emissions permits to those that do not.

[Psyber]

Shouldn't we be introducing legislation to phase out any "right to emit" rather than turning it into a commodity market.
A commodity market may be open to developing speculative "emissions futures" trading?

I'm concerned that once there is such a market there will be so much investment in it that it will have to be maintained in perpetuity.
I'd rather see a temporary tax with the funds raised sequestered to support research and updating to genuine clean technology.

[valleys07]

Shouldn't we be introducing legislation to phase out any "right to emit" rather than turning it into a commodity market.
A commodity market may be open to developing speculative "emissions futures" trading?

I'm concerned that once there is such a market there will be so much investment in it that it will have to be maintained in perpetuity.
I'd rather see a temporary tax with the funds raised sequestered to support research and updating to genuine clean technology.

I thought this was the objective of the carbon tax to begin with?

[Psyber]

I thought this was the objective of the carbon tax to begin with?

I think it was the basic idea behind setting it up as a tax.
But that idea in the ALP's hands still lacked the extra measure of isolating the money raised from general revenue and using it to set up a fund to support transition to clean technology - the Greens and Democrats were better there - and the idea quickly morphed into a trading scheme anyway.

My concern with a trading scheme is that it may become another unstable market like the share market.

[fish]

This ABC article explains things:

There are three key approaches governments around the world are taking in a bid to lower carbon emissions: carbon taxes; emissions-trading schemes (ETS); and direct action.

The Federal Government's plan, though widely referred to as a carbon tax, actually involves implementing a fixed-price ETS from July 2012 and then shifting to a standard ETS within three to five years.

The Federal Opposition favours a direct action approach.

[Sky Pilot]

It doesn't really matter because this time next year hopefully we will have some different people in power and the stupid carbon tax will be consigned to the bin.

[Sojourner]

Toyota Prius awesome!

[Bully]

yeah, the carbon tax is doing its job Lovely cool 45 today. the reducing emmissions is certainly helping where it can

[fish]

Fact check: do bushfires emit more carbon than burning coal

On Wednesday, leader of the National Party and acting Opposition Leader, Warren Truss claimed carbon emissions from the current bushfires are equivalent to decades of carbon emissions from coal-fired power.

The current bushfires are so large that the statement by Warren Truss seems plausible.

This spurred me to do some research to find out.

Coal-fired power stations in Australia emit around 200 million tonnes of CO2 per year. This does not include emissions from our coal exports.

Around 30 tonnes of CO2 per forested hectare were emitted by the Black Saturday Fires in 2009.

Bushfires this year have so far burned around 130,000ha of forest, so have emitted nearly 4 million tonnes of CO2.

So, the bushfires this year have emitted an amount of CO2 equivalent to 2% of Australia’s annual emissions from coal-fired power.

The current bushfires must burn an area of forest greater than Tasmania to generate CO2 emissions equivalent to a year of burning coal for electricity.

And the current bushfires must burn an area of forest the size of New South Wales to generate CO2 emissions equivalent to a decade of burning coal for electricity.

However, the carbon emitted from bushfires is not permanent. Eucalypt forest regenerates after fire, and will quickly begin to sequester from the atmosphere the carbon that has been lost from the current bushfires.

The same cannot be said of coal-fired power stations.

Warren Truss’ statement reflects a view that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are insignificant relative to natural events such as bushfires that have occurred for millennia in Australia.

However, when one drills into the data, the current bushfires provide a stark illustration of the opposite: the amount of carbon that is emitted by bushfires is insignificant relative to our principle sources of greenhouse gas emissions such as coal-fired power.

[Bully]

i can see wayne swann is still pumping out the benefits of the carbon tax ^^^^^

[Sky Pilot]

i can see wayne swann is still pumping out the benefits of the carbon tax ^^^^^

he really is a serious unit

[bulldogproud2]

This ABC article explains things:

There are three key approaches governments around the world are taking in a bid to lower carbon emissions: carbon taxes; emissions-trading schemes (ETS); and direct action.

The Federal Government's plan, though widely referred to as a carbon tax, actually involves implementing a fixed-price ETS from July 2012 and then shifting to a standard ETS within three to five years.

The Federal Opposition favours a direct action approach.

It is believed that a direct action approach will be at least three times more expensive than the ETS and only half as effective. I see a huge deficit coming up for the Liberal Party in their first year of government if they abandon the Carbon Tax and the Mining Rent Tax, introduce the direct action approach, dramatically increase maternity leave payments etc. It is probably time they stopped getting stuck into the Labor Party for abandoning the idea of a surplus as there is no way the Liberal Party would get anywhere near a surplus.
Although the RENT Tax may only produce about $300 million this year, that is still $300 million that the Liberal Government would not be getting.
Cheers

[fish]

New OECD data busts carbon price myths

Despite political claims to the contrary, new research from the OECD finds that 29 countries have higher ‘effective’ carbon prices than Australia.

The OECD publication Taxing Energy Use: A Graphical Analysis provides systematic statistics on energy and carbon taxation across all OECD member countries. It shows that carbon pollution from energy is taxed in every OECD country.

“This impartial analysis destroys claims that Australia’s carbon price, or even taxing energy, is unique or unusual,” said John Connor, CEO of The Climate Institute.

“For example only yesterday the leader of the Coalition declared ‘the rest of the world was not going anywhere near carbon taxes or emission trading schemes.’ This is manifestly untrue. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the mounting evidence that carbon pricing is both widespread and growing.”

Within OECD countries, effective taxes on CO2 from energy range from EUR 107 per tonne ($AU 140) in Switzerland to EUR 2.80 ($AU3.70) in Mexico. The weighted average of all OECD countries is EUR 27 ($AU 35) per tonne.

Australia’s carbon price of $23 (EUR 18) comes in near the bottom of the list of 34 countries – well below Japan, South Korea and the UK, among many others.

Emissions trading schemes are going to start in China and South Korea, adding to existing schemes in the EU and New Zealand and those that began recently in California and Quebec. South Africa is introducing a carbon tax.

[fish]

9pc drop in emissions from power generators

There has been a 9 per cent drop in emissions from electricity generators during the first six months of carbon pricing, a Senate committee has been told.

Last July the Federal Government introduced a carbon price of $23 per tonne for businesses that are big polluters.

Jenny Wilkinson from the Department of Climate Change and Renewable Energy says that since then, there has been a reduction in demand for energy.

She says the early results are due to several factors.

"Increased uptake of renewables on account of the Renewable Energy Target, changes in manufacturing; there's a range of different things which are contributing to this," she said.

"The latest data from the Australian Energy Market operator suggests that emissions from electricity generation have fallen by about 8.6 per cent in the first six months of the year."

The cost businesses now have to pay are set to increase between now and 2015 when there will be a shift towards a trading scheme that will allow the market to set the charges.

[The Sleeping Giant]

Contributing factors? I would say the biggest factor would be the increase in price meaning people switching power off.

[Bully]

not, its julia with her indians with the carbon tax which has reduced carbon emmissons, not that people just "unpluging" their devices during the day when they arent in use or they arent at home. It has NOTHING to do with that, and we have the carbon tax to thanks for the emissons being reduced at a dramtic rate

[fish]

RENEWABLE ENERGY NOW CHEAPER THAN NEW FOSSIL FUELS IN AUSTRALIA

Australia wind beats new coal in the world’s second-largest coal exporter

Sydney, 7 February 2013 – Unsubsidised renewable energy is now cheaper than electricity from new-build coal- and gas-fired power stations in Australia, according to new analysis from research firm Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

This new ranking of Australia’s energy resources is the product of BNEF’s Sydney analysis team, which comprehensively modelled the cost of generating electricity in Australia from different sources. The study shows that electricity can be supplied from a new wind farm at a cost of AUD 80/MWh (USD 83), compared to AUD 143/MWh from a new coal plant or AUD 116/MWh from a new baseload gas plant, including the cost of emissions under the Gillard government’s carbon pricing scheme. However even without a carbon price (the most efficient way to reduce economy-wide emissions) wind energy is 14% cheaper than new coal and 18% cheaper than new gas.

[scoob]

RENEWABLE ENERGY NOW CHEAPER THAN NEW FOSSIL FUELS IN AUSTRALIA

Australia wind beats new coal in the world’s second-largest coal exporter

Sydney, 7 February 2013 – Unsubsidised renewable energy is now cheaper than electricity from new-build coal- and gas-fired power stations in Australia, according to new analysis from research firm Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

This new ranking of Australia’s energy resources is the product of BNEF’s Sydney analysis team, which comprehensively modelled the cost of generating electricity in Australia from different sources. The study shows that electricity can be supplied from a new wind farm at a cost of AUD 80/MWh (USD 83), compared to AUD 143/MWh from a new coal plant or AUD 116/MWh from a new baseload gas plant, including the cost of emissions under the Gillard government’s carbon pricing scheme. However even without a carbon price (the most efficient way to reduce economy-wide emissions) wind energy is 14% cheaper than new coal and 18% cheaper than new gas.

Good to see that renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels! (even without a tax). Presumably these figures are based on new gas/coal power stations and not on the cost of existing power stations?

[Trader]

New research from the OECD finds that 29 countries have higher ‘effective’ carbon prices than Australia.

Is there any explanation of what other costs they have lumped in to come up with these effective prices?