Lenore Taylor wacking the nail on the head :) So the review recommended the RET’s closure for different reasons. The RET is, according to review chairman and self-professed climate sceptic Dick Warburton, a relatively expensive way of reducing carbon emissions. Hmmm, expensive compared to what? At between $35 and $68 per tonne of carbon abated (according to modelling done for the review) it is expensive when compared with the carbon price ($23 a tonne, set to fall to an international price of around $10) but the government just abolished that. So Warburton said the RET was expensive compared with the government’s proposed emissions reduction fund (ERF). The government has not modelled the cost of abatement under the ERF, so that assertion is impossible to check. The prime minister said that, rather than model the $2.5bn fund the government would just “have a crack”. Rough estimates for the ERF are around $10 to $15 a tonne of carbon, but independent modelling done for The Climate Institute by Sinclair Knight Merz found the government would need twice as much money to meet even the minimum 5% target, and it is entirely unclear whether any of that abatement would come from the electricity sector, which makes up 33% of Australia’s emissions and where most abatement options cost a lot more than $10 a tonne. And of course Direct Action has not yet been legislated. So the review is really saying the RET should be canned because it is more expensive than something that hasn’t been quantified and might not happen. Read more: theguardian/world/2014/aug/29/the-ret-may-be-a-success-but-thats-exactly-why-its-on-the-coalitions-hitlist?CMP=soc_567
Posted on: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 04:16:56 +0000
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