By Celsias Team
Posted on July 10, 2011. Listed in:
Australia’s long awaited carbon price will start on July 1, 2012. It’s been a long time coming and has caused ongoing political turmoil.
The price per tonne will be fixed like a tax for three years and then it will move to a market based scheme. Starting at $A23 per tonne, it will rise by 2.5% each year to $24.15 and then $25.40 and then become a market based . It’s estimated that the average household cost will rise by $9.90 per week-most of this will be in increased gas and electricity prices.
More than half of the money raised by the tax will go towards a fairly major compensation package for low income householders so the price at the pump will not be felt. Initially the tax will only hit about 500 companies.
About 60% of Australia’s carbon pollution will be covered. The tax will not apply to agriculture, which will create an interesting contrast to New Zealand’s ETS and no doubt lead to screams of “that’s not fair “ from our farmers. Agriculture is about 16% of Australian emissions and about 49% of New Zealand’s . It will also not apply to petrol or light on road vehicles. Transport fuel is excluded but heavy transport will start paying carbon tax in 2014
More than $9 billion is earmarked to preserve jobs in high –polluting companies. $300 million has been set aside to help the steel industry move to a “clean energy” future and another $1.2 billion is designed to improve energy efficiency is the manufacturing industry. Small businesses will get an asset write-off concession to help lower costs and the Government has been keen to stress that the carbon tax in Australia will not impose extra red tape on small businesses. Nor will they have to pay the tax directly.
The Government says that carbon emissions will be cut by 159 million tonnes per year , apparently by innovation and investment in renewable energy and transforming the energy sector away from high polluting sources such as brown coal. It also claims that millions of tonnes of carbon will be able to be sequestered in the land through better land and waste management.
The farmers' impact is interesting . They will not have to pay the tax, but will get credits for each tonne of carbon pollution which can be stored or reduced in the land. The government is hoping this will lead to new jobs in the regional and rural Australia, hit hard by drought and population decline. There is also encouragement of new native vegetation and habitats with high conservation value.
A new $A10 billiion Clean Energy Finance Corporation will be created to invest in businesses seeking funds to develop clean energy proposals and technologies and an Australian Renewable Energy Agency will manage $A3.2billion in funds for research and development of clean energy technologies.
A Clean Technology Innovation Program will provide $200 million in grants for business investment in renewable energy , low emissions technology and energy efficiency.
a Carbon tax is great, but why so complicated? (yes, yes, politics & lobbyist manipulation)
Bite the bullet, tax Carbon at point of entry into the economy (port, mine head, well head, etc) and make the first $"x",000 of income 0% tax rated. Start the tax low, then ramp it up over the years. Include reference to it in our overseas marketing campaigns to celebrate our path towards societal/economic change.
As per the rest of the world, we should exclude natural animal emissions. If we include cows & sheep, then why not the natural emissions of the people that eat them? And why not the emissions from all animals everywhere? Those in our created food chain are a direct reflection of our exponentially growing global population which is elephant in the middle of the room that everyone is ignoring.
Written in July 2011