Downturn lowers emission targets

Source: Agencies  |   2008-12-6  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

AUSTRALIA'S government will announce a soft start to carbon trading, cutting emissions by 5-10 percent in a move likely to anger environmentalists but soothe businesses fearing a downturn, reports said yesterday.

The center-left government will unveil its plans for the carbon regime on December 15 following divisions among senior cabinet ministers concerned about the impact a 2010 carbon trading start-up could have, as Australia fights now to avert recession.

Ministers, including Climate Change Minister Penny Wong and Treasurer Wayne Swan, were "settling on a target centered on a cut of 10 percent," the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper said yesterday, without saying where the information came from.

But to maintain flexibility in global negotiations on a successor to the Kyoto climate pact, the cut would be expressed as a 5-15 percent reduction range, the paper said.

"Should Australia be accused of wimping it, ministers point out...that a 10 percent cut to national carbon emissions by 2020 is equivalent to a cut of 27 percent per capita because of our expected population growth," the newspaper's political columnist Peter Hartcher wrote.

The Australian national newspaper also said the government would unveil a cut of 5-15 percent in emissions below 2000 levels, opting for the low end of recommendations from its chief climate adviser amid concern about rising joblessness.

"After months of furious lobbying from key industries, including LNG, cement and steel, the government will offer significant changes to its original formula offering wider compensation to trade-exposed emissions-intensive industries," the newspaper said.

An interim framework in July proposed mandating 1,000 of Australia's biggest polluting firms buy permits to pollute. Carbon trading puts a market price on carbon emitted.

Big businesses have warned the government against setting tough interim cuts toward a 2050 reduction target of 60 percent, saying the costs could worsen the economic slowdown and jeopardize growth already halving to 2 percent or less.

But a group of 50 climate groups and scientists wrote to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Thursday to demand a cut of 25 percent to 40 percent to help avert dangerous climate shift.