Carbon Trading Summit — Part 2 — The Story Unfolds
Greensense recently attended the Carbon Trading Summit presented by the AIA. This is Part 2 of a series. You may like to start by reading Part 1.
Following Tony Owen, Bruce Robinson, and Tim Shanahan, we heard from Ray Wills. Ray is the Chief Executive of the WA Sustainable Energy Association. Greensense is one of the members of WASEA.
Ray started with a useful primer on climate change and made the point that while climate change is a theory, it is a theory in the scientific sense, not the colloquial sense of something unproven. That is, it is a widely accepted theoretical explanation supported by clear empirical evidence. He took a number of opportunities to discuss the likely impacts of climate on our local region, mentioning the rule of thumb that each degree of warming was roughly equivalent to a 150Km shift in climatic zone.
He also provided a useful reminder of the long period of policy development to ‘put a price on carbon’ in Australia, starting with Rio in 1992. This reminder was particularly salient given the concerns raised by subsequent speakers that the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme was being rushed and that industry needed more time.
He finally, and perhaps unsurprisingly, finished with some advocacy for renewable energy describing Western Australia as “the middle-east of renewable energy resources”.
We next heard from Andrew Canyon from the local chamber of commerce and industry. He used the forum to advance CCI’s view that while they supported the concept of an emissions trading scheme, the CPRS legislation was being rushed, the current financial crisis meant industry did not have the resources to respond, and that the Government should “do it once and do it right”. He also took a swipe at renewable energy trotting out the old furfy that renewables could not provide ‘base load power’ and implying that WA should stick with coal and gas.
Andrew was followed by Tony Mahr, the Director of Sustainable Development with the Australian Food and Grocery Council. I’ll cover Tony’s presentation in my next post.
Tags: carbon trading summit