Authority splits over report commissioned by Coalition

Climate Change Authority members Anthea
 Harris, Professor David Karoly and Professor
 Clive Hamilton in 2012. Karoly and
Hamilton plan to issue a dissenting
 report on how the government
can meet its emissions reduction target.

A Climate Change Authority review charged with advising the government on how to meet its climate change commitments has led to an unprecedented split in its top ranks, with two of the body’s 11 members writing a dissenting “minority report”.

Guardian Australia understands the official Climate Change Authority report will recommend Australia adopt an intensity-based trading scheme for electricity generators.

A similar scheme was taken to the 2016 election by the Labor party, and was also proposed by Malcolm Turnbull in 2009 when he was opposition leader. Many believe it is a promising way to form a bipartisan approach to climate policy.

Read The Guardian story - “Climate Change Authority splits over ETS report commissioned by Coalition.”

Suggestion of emissions trading but no new climate targets

An “intensity-based” emissions trading scheme for the electricity sector, to begin in 2018, is among a “toolkit” of policies recommended by the Climate Change Authority in a report setting out how Australia can meet its obligations under the Paris climate treaty.

The scheme, similar to a plan proposed by Labor at the last federal election, would set “baselines” for greenhouse emissions per unit of electricity generation, awarding credits to generators who emit less. The report recommended that these baselines be steadily reduced to zero “well before 2050”.

But it stopped short of recommending a planned phase-out of the most polluting power sources such as brown coal power stations, concluding that this will not be a cost-effective way to decarbonise the sector.

Read this piece on The Conversation by the Environment and Energy Editor, Michael Hopkin, who interviewed a Research Fellow from the Melbourne Energy Institute at the University of Melbourne, Dylan McConnell, and a Senior Industry Fellow, RMIT University, Alan Pears - “Climate Change Authority suggests emissions trading but no new climate targets.”