Respected UK economist Nicolas Stern has joined the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute, which was established in Australia earlier this year. This is not only a win for the carbon capture movement but also something of a coup for Australia’s prime minister, Kevin Rudd. The joint announcement with President Obama proved a hit back home for Rudd (though with some outlets more than others).
But as news website Crikey points out, it is one not entirely without self-interest; Australia is after all a big exporter and consumer of coal, and comes third after China and the US in the global production ranks.
And it is also welcome politically. The country’s centre-left Labor Party government made a cap-and-trade scheme a core part of their election platform, getting an emissions trading scheme bill passed in Australia has proved just as thorny as the passage of the US Waxman-Markey legislation.
Perhaps more so, in fact, because the Australian parliamentary system is more adversarial than that of the United States: everyone votes on party lines and genuine cross-party efforts on legislation are much rarer.
The government, hoping to put pressure on the opposition, had pushed for a Senate vote on the scheme in June, but those plans ran aground when two minority senators delayed the vote until August. Independent Senator Nick Xenaphon wanted more research on the effects of the scheme, while Steve Fielding, from the right-wing Family First party, has become something of a key figure in a recent resurgence of climate change scepticism – both in Australia and the US.
So, as Crikey writes, the CCS announcement is more than just a diplomatic nice-to-have:
Unlike its ETS, it is almost entirely within the Government’s control to establish and pursue major CCS initiatives. And unlike the ETS, CCS directly addresses the biggest problem for mainstream policy-makers: that Australia’s dependence on coal makes it not merely one of the most carbon-intense economies in the world, but also one of the planet’s biggest carbon dealers.
Related links:
Rudd scores global coup on carbon capture (Crikey, 10/07/09)
Australian resources companies under fire over carbon commitments (FT Energy Source, 15/06/09)
Australia’s emissions trading scheme delayed: What it means (FT Energy Source, 05/05/09)
