The Australian Garnaut Report - Introduction

The Garnaut Report released in early July 2008 recommends adopting an “ Emissions Trading Scheme” (ETS) from 2010.

The proposal involves charging high-polluting Industries such as coal- fired powers stations; power companies, forestry and agriculture companies and transport companies for each tonne carbon they emit.

These Industries would have to buy permits to emit greenhouse gases and the costs would be passed on to the public which will be encouraged to consume less and thereby forcing people to look for alternative renewal and cleaner energy source.

The Scheme involves the issuing of permits for approximately 500 million tonnes of carbon at the current cost of $20 a tonne. Each company polluting the atmosphere will acquire carbon credits which will raise approximately $AUD10 billion. In other words Australian Industry will collectively expend $AUD10 billion to acquire the relevant permits.

An Emissions permit will enable the holder to emit a specified quantity of greenhouse gas once.

Companies will be allocated permits to emit greenhouse gases within an overall emissions target (60 per cent reductions by 2050) set by the Rudd Government. These companies will be able to trade those permits, allowing larger polluters to buy extra polluting power and smaller polluters to make some money from their cleaner record. But the overall emissions cannot exceed the government’s target.

The report makes it very clear that Australia on its own may not be able to make any significant reduction of worldwide emission and other developed countries will have to adopt similar schemes to make a world wide impact in emission reduction.

 for the Garnaut Review website - where you can download the Garnaut Climate Change Review Draft Report.