Following on the report of the Prime Minister’s Task Group on Emissions Trading which appeared on 31 May 2007, on 17 July 2007, the Prime Minister launched the Federal Government’s official response, Australia’s Climate Change Policy: our economy, our environment, our future. The Climate Change Policy endorsed the key recommendations of the Task Group and committed Australia to implementing an Australian Emissions Trading Scheme (AETS) no later than 2012. Important features of the AETS include the following:
- the AETS will be based on an ‘all sources, all sinks’ cap-and-trade model with initial exclusion of emissions from agriculture and land use and with a wide range of available carbon offsets
- the AETS will impose direct liability for greenhouse gas emissions on large facilities and indirect liability via upstream fuel suppliers for other emitters
- permits to emit a specific quantum of greenhouse gases will be issued on a free, periodic basis to ‘trade-exposed, emissions-intensive’ industries for so long as international competitors do not face similar carbon constraints; on a free but once-only basis to existing businesses identified as likely to suffer a disproportionate loss of value due to the introduction of a carbon price; and by periodic auctioning in other cases
- there will be a ‘safety valve’ fee for exceeding the emissions for which an entity holds permits, but that fee will be set relatively low in the initial stages, and
- there will be potential to link to other comparable national and regional schemes.
Pursuant to that commitment, the government has established the Climate Change Group (CCG) within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to coordinate the move towards the AETS. The CCG will be conducting public consultations in Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth between 27 and 31 August 2007.
On 15 August 2007, the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Bill 2007 was introduced, and received its second reading, in the House of Representatives.
The Bill would establish a single national framework for reporting greenhouse gas emissions, abatement actions and energy consumption and production by corporations from 1 July 2008.
Among other things, the Bill would:
- require corporations which emit prescribed levels of greenhouse gases, or which produce or consume prescribed amounts of energy, to apply for registration with the National Greenhouse and Energy register (NGE Register)
- specify the information to be entered into the NGE Register, and the information which must be made available to the public, and
- outline the obligations of registered corporations, including the requirements to report annually to the Greenhouse and Energy Data Officer, and to keep certain records.
The Bill would also:
- provide for penalties, infringement notices and other matters related to enforcement, and
- provide for ‘authorised officers’ to monitor compliance, including prescribing their functions, powers and obligations.
The Australian Greenhouse Office will be conducting information sessions on the Bill in conjunction with the consultation sessions on the AETS referred to above.
On 13 August 2007, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Science and Innovation, following a lengthy inquiry, released its report on geosequestration technology, Between a rock and a hard place: The science of geosequestration.
The report is generally positive about the prospects for scientifically and economically geosequestration to occur in Australia, and recommends:
- funding for the CSIRO to progress research being conducted through the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies into the potential for permanent carbon dioxide sequestration in sedimentary basins in New South Wales
- funding, based on a competitive tender process, for one or more large-scale geosequestration demonstration projects
- development of an appropriate environmental risk management and regulatory framework for geosequestration, and
- the provision of direct and indirect financial incentives to encourage the continued development and testing of carbon capture and storage technology.
The report is available online at the Parliament of Australia House of Representatives website.
On 27 July 2007, the New South Wales Government introduced into parliament the Renewable Energy (New South Wales) Bill 2007. The Bill would implement for New South Wales a scheme similarly to the Commonwealth’s Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET) and the corresponding scheme which came into force on 1 January 2007 in Victoria (VRET).
Briefly, the Bill would require certain persons who acquire electricity from the national electricity market for use in New South Wales or who generate electricity for their own use or for retail supply in New South Wales to acquire a certain percentage of electricity from renewable energy sources each year. To comply with the renewable energy target, those persons would need to surrender certificates created by energy generators that generate electricity using renewable energy sources (such as hydro, wind and solar).
The New South Wales Renewable Energy Target (NRET) will be additional to, and not a substitute for, the existing Greenhouse Gas Reduction Scheme. Target levels of renewable energy under the NRET are proposed to be 10 per cent by 2010 and 15 per cent by 2020.
In South Australia, the Climate Change and Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act 2007 commenced operation on 3 July 2007.
The Act commits South Australia to lower greenhouse gas emission levels by 60 per cent by 2050, and sets an interim target of returning to 1990 emission levels by 2020. The Act also sets the following targets in relation to renewable energy:
- to increase renewable electricity generation so it makes up at least 20 per cent of electricity generated in the state by the end of 2014, and
- to increase renewable electricity consumption so it makes up at least 20 per cent of electricity used in the state by the end of 2014.
In Western Australia, the Premier has also foreshadowed, in his statement issued on 6 May 2007 entitled ‘Climate Change: Making Decisions for the Future’, that the Western Australian Government would introduce a climate change Bill to implement a range of measures with a view to reducing Western Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions to 60 per cent of 2000 levels by 2050.
The decision of the New South Wales Land and Environment Court in Drake-Brockman v Minister for Planning [2007] NSWLEC 490, delivered on 13 August 2007, has placed in doubt what many had believed was a heightened requirement, following the court’s earlier decision in Gray v Minister for Planning [2006] NSWLWEC 720, to perform a detailed greenhouse gas emission assessment, including an assessment of ‘downstream’ or ‘Scope 3’ impacts, in the context of the planning assessment of major projects in New South Wales.
Drake-Brockman concerned a challenge to the grant by the Minister for Planning of ‘concept plan approval’ for the redevelopment of the former Carlton United Brewery site in central Sydney, based in part on the allegation that the environmental assessment supporting the concept plan application had failed to include a detailed quantitative analysis of the greenhouse gas impacts of the proposal. Delivering the court’s decision, Justice Jagot effectively confined the decision in Gray to its own facts, which crucially included a ‘disjunction’ between what the Director-General of Planning had required by way of environmental assessment and what he accepted as adequate for that purpose.
In Drake-Brockman, Justice Jagot held that impacts related to climate change constitute only one aspect of ecologically sustainable development (ESD) and that ESD itself constitutes only one aspect of the considerations relevant to the assessment of development proposals. Her Honour held that ‘the weight to be given to each relevant issue is a matter for the decision-maker, absent a claim of Wednesbury unreasonableness’ and that ‘the idea that the Minister can only consider ecologically sustainable development by considering a quantitative analysis of greenhouse gas emissions finds no support in the statutory scheme enacted by Parliament’.
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