the 2019 election
Following his accession following Mr Turnbull's demise, the new Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, who once distinguished himself by carrying a lump of coal into the House, announced that the NEG was officially "dead", and Australia remained without any energy policy at all for the following six months, until on 24 February 2019 with an election looming, Mr Morrison brought forward a $3.5-billion climate solutions package to be spent over 15 years, the central features of which were:
- about $2 billion from the package was to be spent on a climate solutions fund, an extension of former prime minister Tony Abbott's Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF).
- The money would be used to pay farmers and other groups who reduce emissions or prevent carbon dioxide release into the atmosphere, such as by retaining native vegetation or making their businesses more energy efficient.
These measures would purportedly help meet the Coalition’s goal of reducing Australia’s emissions by 26 per cent by 2030, but informed opinion by several authoritative international bodies and the government’s own projections, suggested that even at that stage Australia would miss the target. Also, the fund, which pays farmers to plant trees or factories to install filters, was only worth $200 million on average a year, too small to make much difference. "In any case the policy always had a fundamental flaw. It (did) nothing to curb emissions in other sectors such as electricity, farming and transport".
Business interest in the scheme dropped off, with hundreds of proposed projects dwindling to a handful by the middle of 2019. The plan was also hindered by a series of failed projects - ones that promised to make carbon cuts but didn't deliver - according to the global scorecard website climateactiontracker.org The Climate Solutions Package was justifiably described as "a Mickey Mouse" alternative to reduce emissions.
In other words, at this point in time, Australia had no mechanism at all for controlling its greenhouse emissions and there was a strong probability that it would not meet its Paris commitments, a state of affairs which essentially still remains to this day (September 2020) despite the developments below.
Other avenues floated in the 2019 election
Other features of the Coalition's package, and indeed Labor and the Greens overall policy approaches at the time, were comprehensively considered in an article by Nicole Hasham in the Sydney Morning Herald on 13 May 2019. The Coalition's include allocating $1.38 billion towards the Snowy Hydro expansion, intended to pump water uphill into dams and release it at times of high electricity demand, thereby acting as a giant battery and backing up intermittent energy produced by wind and solar energy; using carry-over carbon credits from the Kyoto protocol period; ruling out allowing businesses to buy international carbon credits, or permits to meet their obligations to cut carbon pollution; consulting on a national hydrogen strategy; possibly increasing the number of electric cars on the market, but without firm targets
The Coalition was also considering using taxpayer money to upgrade a NSW coal-fired power station and also pledged to fund a feasibility study into a so-called “high-efficiency, low-emissions” coal plant in north Queensland. The Coalition also backed the controversial proposed Adani coal mine and said the project would encourage the development of vast coal resources in Queensland's Galilee Basin.
Labor's emission reduction policy included:
- reducing emissions by 45% based on 2005 levels (still inconsistent with keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees);
- not allowing the use of Kyoto carryover credits but allowing companies to offset their carbon liabilities by purchasing international permits;
- perhaps adopting the Coalition’s now-defunct National Energy Guarantee but applying the aforesaid emissions reduction target of 45 per cent;
- in the event of Senate rejection of its proposals, accelerating the uptake of renewables through a $10-billion injection in the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and $5 billion to upgrade transmission infrastructure;
- offering $200 million in rebates to subsidise 100,000 batteries in homes and businesses thereby allowing rooftop solar power to be stored, boosting grid reliability and helping meet Labor’s goal of 50 per cent renewables in the electricity mix by 2030;
- investing $1.14 billion in a national hydrogen plan; and
- putting forward a target for electric vehicles to make up half of all new car sales by 2030.
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