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Australia Adopts Carbon Tax - 5:41 AM
Very interesting (and climate change related) news have just come out of Australia. Starting July 2012, Australia will be the second major economy to put a cap on carbon based on legislation recently passed in the Australian Parliament. This move was taken just a few weeks shy of the upcoming climate talks scheduled for December in South Africa.
The legislation, which includes 18 laws passed by their Senate on November 8, 2011, will set a fixed tax on carbon of A$23 (US$23.7) for the country’s 500 largest emitters, with a shift in strategy to a trading scheme starting July 2015. The carbon market in Australia is estimated to reach a value of A$15 billion by 2015.
Australia generates a high percentage of their electricity from the burning of coal, which makes their per capita CO2 emissions higher than any other developed nation. Despite accounting for only about 0.3% of the world’s population, Australia accounts for approximately 1.5 % of the world’s emissions. The carbon cap program aims to help the country reach its goal of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by five percent from 2000 levels by 2020. They’ll do this by pushing industry and utilities to move toward more energy efficiency and power generation from cleaner fuels like natural gas and renewables.
According to a Reuters article on the subject, Prime Minister Julia Gillard had this to say about the legislation, "Today Australia has a price on carbon as the law of our land. This comes after a quarter of a century of scientific warnings, 37 parliamentary inquiries, and years of bitter debate and division."
The EU is the other major economy in the cap and trade game, though the plan adopted in California will also be significant on the world stage. There is also movement from China and South Korea to establish similar carbon trading programmes.
