It’s been an exciting week in politics with Kevin Rudd deposed and the appointment of Australia’s first female Prime Minister.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has said that she “will re-prosecute the case for a carbon price at home and abroad”, but that “rebuilding consensus” is a precursor to pricing carbon. This doesn’t give me any cause to think we will have an emissions trading scheme in the next couple of years, and if anything it suggests the Labor party might restart consultation and might consider a different policy direction entirely. A carbon tax, perhaps? After years of development and debate will the CPRS be abandoned?

Meanwhile, there is a renewed focus on energy efficiency. The Department of Climate Change was recently renamed ‘Climate Change & Energy Efficiency’. The (previous) Prime Minister established an energy efficiency taskforce and now new legislation has been passed for mandatory disclosure of building energy efficiency. Climate Works Australia, a non-profit ‘think tank’ found in their Low Carbon Growth Plan report that energy efficiency could save the Australian economy over $5 billion dollars by 2020. And the Energy Efficiency Council of Australia have just released their own report (PDF), which said that energy efficiency represented the “biggest, cheapest and fastest” way to cut greenhouse gas emissions and is now more urgent, “particularly with both major political parties delaying a carbon price”.

Perhaps while Julia Gillard is rebuilding consensus on a carbon price, we’ll see some new policies developed to further encourage energy efficiency?

This entry was posted on Friday, June 25th, 2010 at 10:44 am and is filed under Emissions Trading (CPRS), Energy Efficiency. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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