Finkel’s Clean Energy Target plan ‘better than nothing’: economists poll

Few topics have attracted as much political attention in Australia over the past decade as emissions reduction policy.

Enough blue-sky thinking: economists back the
emissions policy that Alan Finkel has put on the table.

Amid mounting concern over electricity price increases across Australia and coinciding with blackouts in South Australia and near-misses in New South Wales, the Australian government asked Chief Scientist Alan Finkel to provide a blueprint for reform of the electricity industry, in a context in which emissions reduction policy was an underlying drumbeat.

In a new poll of the ESA Monash Forum of leading economists, a majority said that Finkel’s suggested Clean Energy Target was not necessarily a better option than previously suggested policies such as an emissions trading scheme. But many added that doing nothing would be worse still.

Read the piece on The Conversation by the Director of Carbon and Energy Markets at Victoria University, Bruce Mountain -  “Finkel’s Clean Energy Target plan ‘better than nothing’: economists poll.”