Canavan condemns business emissions selfregulation to meet Paris target
Big business has entered discussions about a self-regulated suite of measures to help Australia meet its Paris commitments, weeks after the Morrison government abandoned the national energy guarantee.
The resources minister, Matt Canavan, accused Australia’s biggest energy companies of interfering in the democratic process, as climate experts and environmental groups lashed the government over the development on Thursday.
“We have a demonstrable way in Australia and western society of resolving fraught political disputes about energy. It’s called democracy and I don’t think the corporate sector is a replacement,” Canavan told a Sydney energy conference.
The discussions about an industrywide package to help Australia meet its Paris commitments and provide investment certainty are taking place within the Business Council of Australia’s energy and climate change committee and were first reported by the Australian Financial Review.
Quoting industry sources, the paper said the suite of measures would be aimed at curbing emissions, improving reliability and providing investor certainty. Guardian Australia has confirmed discussions for a such a package have taken place.
The Business Council of Australia (BCA) was approached for comment.
Some experts welcomed news the business community was willing to step up to the plate after the government signalled it would focus solely on energy prices and reliability, and not emissions.
But they also lamented the development as a government failure.
“This is a sign of just how messed up the politics of climate and energy policy have become,” Frank Jotzo, the research director at the Australian National University Crawford school of public policy, told Guardian Australia.
“It shows us just how important it is to the business community to have sensible policy and predictable policy in place. Business would like government to … help that transition along rather than somehow stem the tide in a somewhat chaotic fashion.”
Dylan McConnell, of the University of Melbourne’s climate and energy college, told Guardian Australia it was a “reflection of the toxic politics around energy”.
“It’s a bit of a concern that we’re potentially heading to a self-regulation model around this,” he said, adding that he was sceptical of the BCA’s credibility on emissions reductions.
The Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change warned on Monday that the world had just 12 years to avoid climate change catastrophe.
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, on Thursday reiterated his confidence that Australia would meet its Paris commitments, a claim that has been contradicted by a wide range of experts.
Erwin Jackson, a senior climate change and energy adviser at Environment Victoria, said the possibility of an industry-led mechanism was “interesting to explore but the core challenge will be ensuring it has broad cross sectoral support”.
“It’s a damning indictment of the failure of the Coalition to come up with a credible and enduring climate policy,” he told Guardian Australia.
“Business by itself can’t deliver the certainty that the community and investors are going to need to drive the transition.”
Jotzo said it was “difficult to conceive of an actual scheme that would be implemented and run by industry alone”.
But he said the discussions would send a strong message to the government.
“When it comes to to anything that involves financial transactions, you need a policy framework to incentivise that,” Jotzo said.