BUSINESS ‘ Good luck’ on emissions
COMPETITION tsar Rod Sims says it is unworkable to include emission- reduction initiatives in an overarching energy policy because of polarised opinions in Canberra.
“If your prerequisite for an energy policy is to get agreement on emission reductions, I can only say good luck,” the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair said at an energy conference yesterday.
“Every political party in the country has a different approach to emissions reduction. Every single party.
“Now I’m not going to buy into that debate – it’s a stunningly important debate – but I’m simply saying if that’s your hurdle, good luck.”
The Federal Government’s dumped national energy guarantee attempted to fuse an emissions reduction component with a reliability requirement, while at the same time reducing wholesale electricity prices.
But the proposed scheme was met with unrest within the Coalition, compounding over a decade of paralysis on climate policy.
New Energy Angus Taylor has Minister relegated carbon emissions behind the Government’s higher priorities of cutting power prices and ensuring system reliability.
Mr Sims yesterday said it made more sense for carbon pollution levels to be dealt with separately from power price and reliability goals.
“There are many saying you can’t get agreement on emissions reductions and therefore you don’t have an energy policy,” he said. “But I think that’s wrongheaded. You can focus on reliability and affordability separate from emissions … a separate set of objectives and separate set of instruments.”
Mr Sims said each of the three policy objectives needed a separate lever to work properly in the market.
“For each objective you need a set of instruments targeted to that objective,” he said.
In July, the ACCC set out 56 recommendations for reform of the electricity market that it estimated would cut household power bills by between 20 and 25 per cent.
Initiatives include federal financing assistance for the entry of new- generation projects to help break the stranglehold of the big three “gentailers” – AGL Energy, EnergyAustralia and Origin Energy.