http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/our-carbon-tax-is-uniqu...ACCORDING to ALP backbencher Andrew Leigh, "the Australian carbon price is quite typical of international schemes". Let us take one of the examples he used on this page earlier in the week --New Zealand -- and compare that claim with reality.
The starting point is that the Australian system charges $23 a tonne and raises about $9 billion a year. According to Treasury's latest forecast, released only last week, this will rise to $29 a tonne in three years and to $37 a tonne in 2020 before soaring to $350 a tonne by 2050. The $23 price alone has been the main factor in Australia's highest quarterly electricity price rises.New Zealand's present carbon price is equivalent to $1.11 a tonne of CO2. So our scheme is over 20 times more expensive per tonne of emissions. The NZ scheme notionally covers half of the country's emissions, but each permit is offered on a two-for-one basis, so New Zealanders pay for only 25 per cent of their emissions. This is what is happening elsewhere in the world. No one else is making people pay for the bulk of their emissions. Governments have basically given firms their present emissions entitlement, with a little bit of trading on the margin.
On top of the fact New Zealanders have to pay for only 25 per cent of their permits, they can purchase unlimited quantities of cheap UN carbon offset permits.
Beyond New Zealand, the European scheme is in near collapse because of a huge over-allocation of free permits. Essentially there is a glut and no one wants to pay higher electricity prices to fix that glut.
In the US, the one certainty from the election is that neither candidate will go anywhere near a carbon tax. The idea of putting up, rather than pushing down, electricity and gas prices is pure political poison.
In Canada, the centre-left Liberal Party was all but obliterated in an election that was a referendum on a Canadian carbon tax, and Japan has deferred any carbon tax indefinitely.China is going through the greatest growth in coal consumption in history. It recently almost doubled the projected increase in coal usage. In 2002, Chinese coal consumption was 1.4 billion tonnes. It has long been Beijing's policy that this would reach four billion tonnes a year by 2015 before flattening out. However, in a speech strangely ignored by the ALP, China's Wu Yin, of the National Energy Administration, said in May that his country's coal consumption would grow to 7.5 billion tonnes by 2030.
In terms of emissions, this growth is the one fact the world needs to know. It is not a criticism of China, which is going through the great historic task of development, electrification and bringing more people out of poverty than at any time in history. But it is a reality check on a grand scale. A few micro carbon trading schemes that may tax only the lightest portion of emissions means little in the face of the greatest rise in coal consumption in history.
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