[LINK] Australian Climate Change Minister on prospects for China/USA agreement in Durban

Tom Koltai tomk at unwired.com.au
Fri Nov 25 13:03:45 AEDT 2011



> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Tom Worthington
> Sent: Friday, 25 November 2011 12:00 PM
> To: link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> Subject: [LINK] Australian Climate Change Minister on 
> prospects for China/USA agreement in Durban
> 
> 
> Greetings from the Australian National University in 
> Canberra, where the 
> Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, Greg 
> Combet AM MP, is 
> speaking on "Carbon markets and international linkage: 
> Australia and the 
> UN Climate Change Conference, Durban 2011". A podcast of the 
> presentation will be provided later.
> 
> One major issue is if there will be sufficient confidence in a carbon 
> trading mechanism. The EU had problems with the security of their 
> on-line trading system. Some way to audit thousands of 
> offsets projects 
> around the world will be needed. These might use some techniques from 
> arms agreement verification, with satellite surveillance to make sure 
> that companies and countries are not cheating.
> 
> See: 
> http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/11/arbon-markets-australia-and-du
rban.html

This is basically a smokescreen to cover the huge impost (tax) that
government will be adding to our coal-fired electricity bills next year.
There will not be any money generated from offering our technical
expertise in this area to foreign countries. I mean would you hire as a
consultant an organisation from a country that charges twice the growing
rate for a UNFCC ? (No I didn't think so. Neither will anyone else.)

Australians (according to the ABC [1]), generate an average of 14 tonnes
per annum (against a US total of 59 [2] tonnes per household)

Australia trading the (proprietary ???) oh so expensive ($23 p/ton) AU
project generated carbon credit will never become a reality unless the
politicians agree to match the lower EU valued tonnage price.

In fact, the way to get Australian credits traded would be to copy the
US bond market strategy over the last decade. Discount our credits for
the first six months to market less 15% giving every trader in the world
reason to buy Australian CC's. (The current US economy is an excellent
example of how shorting your own bonds works.)

However, for a limited short term duration, this would boost the
generation of green energy projects, providing infrastructure
development and jobs more than anything else related to the Power
industry that the Government could think of doing. Even at $10 per
tonne.

Oh, and the difference to your electricity, water and sewerage rates
next year ?

Government price at $23 = $322.00 (per household)
International Price @ $11 = $154.00

The difference equals a windfall to the Government of only
$1,377,600,000.
In other words, not even enough to construct a decent sized solar power
station.


TomK

Refs:

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/tv/carboncops/calculator.htm
[2] http://www.thehcf.org/images/2007/5A_new2S.jpg








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