Opposition within Australia to taking action on climate change, from national, uniform gross feed-in tariffs to the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) usually rallies around the assertion that by “going it alone” our economy would suffer.
This argument killed the Rudd Government’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and the same specious logic is being used against the current push for a carbon tax.
But a new report from the Climate Institute has found that, far from going it alone, Australia is in fact falling behind the rest of the world when it comes to pricing pollution, largely due to lack of support for renewable energy ventures.
“More and more competitors are putting a price tag on pollution to boost clean energy competitiveness,” said The Climate Institute’s Deputy CEO Erwin Jackson. “There is no risk of Australia leading the world in making businesses responsible for the pollution they cause – we have already been overtaken by competitors including the UK, China and the USA.”
International market research firm Vivid Economics assessed incentives to clean energy project deployments like large-scale wind and solar farms applied to the electricity generation sector in 2010, in Australia, China, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States.
A comparison of the effort countries are taking was measured as an equivalent price tag on pollution – dollars per tonne of carbon pollution.
The report found that under the implied carbon pricing formula Australia ranked second lowest.
– UK: US$29.30
– China: US$14.20
– North East USA: US$9.50; USA Overall: US$5.10
– Japan: US$3.10
– Australia: US$1.70
– South Korea: US$0.70
Mr Jackson said the findings should be of real concern to business and government leaders, as the only real reason Australia made the list at all is due the introduction of the Renewable Energy Target.
“The UK is reaping the benefits of its policies to price pollution, in addition to its participation in the European Emissions Trading Scheme, and has an equivalent price tag around 17 times that of Australia’s. Investment in clean energy in the UK reached around US$ 11 billion in 2009 and captured around 17 per cent of the market in the countries studied,” said Mr Jackson.
The Climate Institute’s full report can be downloaded here (PDF)
