Australia | Leader rules out generators paying for pollution

Australia’s prime minister yesterday ruled out making power companies pay for greenhouse gas pollution they create — a policy option that angered conservative government lawmakers when proposed by a minister this week.

Malcolm Turnbull said a review of the government’s climate change policies next year aimed at achieving greenhouse gas reduction targets by 2030 would not include any measures that would inflate electricity bills.

“We are not going to take any steps that will increase the already too high cost of energy for Australian families and businesses,” Turnbull told reporters.

The government swept to power at elections in 2013 with a promise to abolish an unpopular carbon tax that was levied against the nation’s biggest industrial polluters. Had the former center-left Labor Party government won that election, the tax would have transitioned into an emissions trading scheme in which polluters would pay for carbon credits at a price set by market forces.

Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg angered some colleagues on Monday when he said the policy review would consider making electricity generators pay for their pollution through a so-called emissions intensity scheme. Under such a scheme, generators who create above-average emissions for the amount of power they produce would have to buy carbon credits from generators whose emissions are below average or face penalties imposed by the government.

One of the government’s most conservative lawmakers, Cory Bernardi, described the policy as “one of the dumbest things I’ve heard in politics in recent times.”

Frydenberg said yesterday, after Turnbull spoke, that an emissions intensity scheme would never be part of government policy.

Australia has pledged to reduce its carbon emissions by at least 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.

Australia is among the world’s worst greenhouse gas polluters on a per capita basis because of its heavy reliance on abundant reserves of cheap coal for electricity generation. MDT/AP