“They’re gone:” Labor bins Kyoto carryover credits, shuts carbon accounting loophole
reneweconomy.com.au
Labor bins hundreds of millions of Kyoto “carryover” carbon credits, permanently removing the option to use them to shirk Australia’s climate responsibilities.

Federal Labor has binned hundreds of millions of Kyoto “carryover” carbon credits, permanently removing the option for them to be used in to shrink Australia’s emissions reduction task and shirk its climate responsibilities.

Federal energy and climate minister Cris Bowen announced the move on Friday, day two of the 10th Australasian Emissions Reduction Summit in Sydney, and confirmed it in person at the event.

“My colleague, assistant minister Jenny McAllister, has signed the instruction which cancels them, they’re gone,” he told the summit on Friday morning.

Australia’s surplus Kyoto credits, which had amassed to more than 700 million, have for years been a blight on Australia’s climate efforts, even when those efforts themselves amounted to the better part of nothing at all.

In 2019, the Morrison Coalition government had sought to use the credits, created under the Kyoto Protocol through soft targets and convenient accounting loopholes, to further minimise its already paltry climate mitigation efforts.

  • Gorgritch_Umie_Killa
    9·
    1 year ago

    Ah, good news! I’d forgotten about that Liberal-National fudging, until the National’s party member on QandA this week referred to them in defence of their terrible inaction.

  • vividspecter@lemm.ee
    6·
    1 year ago

    This is a bit unfortunate:

    “We certainly won’t be introducing anything like an economy wide carbon price,” he said.

    “Australia is the only country that’s done it and then repealed it in the world …So you’re reigniting the climate wars if you do that, I think – and the times have changed.

    “The price signals about renewable energy are a lot different in 2023 than they were in 2009. So that’s why we’ve gone down the sectoral approach.”

    Although their reasoning is understandable given the unhinged response from the media we could expect and because renewables are so competitive at this point. A shame though, given it’s a very effective way to reduce emissions, as the period before the repeal of the price by the Abbott-led Coalition government demonstrated.