Australia to Implement Carbon Trading Scheme by 2010

Following in the steps of the EU and their Emission Trading Scheme, Australia will be implementing a their own by 2010. Announced Monday by the Minister for Climate Change, Penny Wong, the national scheme would “constitute the most significant economic and structural reform undertaken in Australia since the trade liberalization of the 1980s.”

Often it is hard to understand just what a trading scheme is all about, but I finally found it explained simply and clearly. The AFP wrote; ‘Emissions trading schemes place a limit on the amount of greenhouse gas pollution which companies can produce, forcing heavy polluters to buy credits from companies that pollute less — thereby creating financial incentives to fight global warming.’

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This is, to me, an Australian, great and big news. For so long we stood as outsiders to the world of environmental protection. We wouldn’t sign the Kyoto protocol despite protests and criticism, both internationally and internally.

But with the election of centre-left Labor leader Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister towards the end of 2007, things began to change.

His first act as leader of our nation was to sign the Kyoto protocol; but that seemed like an empty gesture in light of everything else. So this actual step forward – one that is visible from across the world – is one that will hopefully bring Australia to the forefront of fighting climate change.

Senator Wong said that consultations with industry and non-governmental groups had already begun, and that she hoped to have a draft proposal of the scheme ready for public comment by July. This is something that I’ll be watching for carefully, so stay tuned.

As to what the draft would address? Wong stated that it would address, “how we are going to set the targets, what sort of issues we are going to address, how we will address the impacts on various aspects of the economy and how the scheme will work.”

The scheme, which will set a price on the head of greenhouse gases emitted by the burning of coal and gas, is hoped to be put before parliament by early 2009, and quickly placed in to force later that year. “We will set a level of emissions, we will have permits up to that level, and the market will trade and the market will set the price,” Senator Wong said.

Image Courtesy of AFP

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