Australia’s biggest polluters will have to wait years to access international carbon credits to offset emissions at home under a trading program due to start in 2023, the Australian Financial Review reported, citing Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen.
In a speech at the newspaper’s energy summit on Monday, Bowen will say it will take several years to establish the integrity of overseas credits so that they count toward Australia’s emissions-reduction target, according to the AFR. That’s a blow to major polluters in the mining and resources sectors, the AFR said.
In his speech, Labor’s Bowen will push the Opposition to pass legislation, to be introduced next month, to establish a domestic carbon credit and trading program, the newspaper reported.
(By Angus Whitley)
Comments
Balter
Back in the day I rather supported carbon trading schemes, but now prefer a tax – because carbon credits keep turning up in the darnedest places: Paradise Papers, Interpol notices. They are slippery things, concocted at the whim of various schemers who tend to be politicos and accountants for the bourgeoisie rather than scientists. Taxes on the other hand (assuming you’re in a democracy) can be followed, tracked – you can see where the money goes and it stays in country. Every carbon credit scheme I’ve heard or seen has some degree of arbitrary – for instance you get the UK claiming they’re “carbon neutral” because they switch to wood pellets instead of coal, after the UN hums, haws and guesses it is indeed “carbon neutral” when in fact you need nine carloads of pellets, dried, compressed and shipped from Canada, to get the same BTUs as six carloads o coal. I wouldn’t bring it up but BoJo actually then turned around and scolded Canada for not keeping up to the prowess of the British…