Australia’s minority federal Labor government has warned local government that it needs to do its own sums on how much the carbon price will affect it, especially in relation to greenhouse gas emissions from landfill .
Representatives from about 100 local councils around the country have been in the national capital, Canberra, for a forum with the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, and the Clean Energy Regulator to make sure they have the right information about the carbon price legislation that comes into effect on July 1.
Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency Mark Dreyfus said it was important local government did not just take all claims about the impact of the carbon price at face value.
“Some councils appear to be significantly overestimating the impact of the carbon price on landfill, when the vast majority of landfill sites will not be subject to a carbon price at all,” he told the forum.
Only larger landfill sites, which had emissions of more than 25,000 tonnes a year, would be liable for the tax.
Even those could use gas capture technology to cut emissions by up to 75 per cent, which would get them back under the cap.
Mr Dreyfus told the council representatives there also were opportunities to make money under the carbon pricing scheme.
“A carbon credit can be earned for every tonne of pollution cut or avoided from landfill, and these can be sold on carbon markets generating extra income for councils or landfill operators,” he said.
At the forum it was revealed that the climate change department, the regulator and the Australian Local Government Association (ALGA) would join forces to run support sessions to help councils work out how the carbon price would affect them.
ALGA jointly hosted the forum in Canberra, saying it wanted to ensure councils got accurate information about the obligations and opportunities associated with the carbon price.
The two-day forum will also hear from councils that are implementing new management and accounting systems to deal with changes to their landfills as a result of carbon pricing.
ALGA says councils with large methane-emitting landfills will have to capture the gases or pass the cost of the carbon price onto ratepayers.
Operating a rubbish tip or landfill site is one of the biggest greenhouse gas-emitting problems local governments face, and it will be an even bigger problem now a carbon price has been set.
ALGA vice president Felicity Anne Lewis says 300 sites across Australia need to have their emissions addressed and none will receive federal government compensation.
“Clearly for councils, the challenge is how we can reduce those emissions so that we can mitigate the costs, because ultimately it will be the ratepayer who will be paying that,” she said.
“We’re looking to be creative, to looking at councils that have already had a bit of an experience in this field to look at how they actually mitigated their carbon emissions and tried to get them under that 25,000-tonne threshold and what the opportunities are.
“So turn a challenge into an opportunity I guess.”
Some councils, like Tweed Shire in northern New South Wales, are being held up as examples to follow.
In 2002 it installed gas capture on its landfill site and in 2006 a contractor began burning the gas for electricity.
The Tweed Shire’s director for community and natural resources, David Oxenham, says it produces on average about 3000 megawatt hours a year.
“That amount of power, the power produced from this plant, would power in the order of about 400 homes,” he said.
“It’s sold back into the grid by the contractor who operates that power-generation plant.
“In terms of the financial arrangements, all of those financial benefits go towards the contractor.
“The benefit the council gets obviously is that our emissions, our carbon emissions, are significantly reduced at that landfill site.”
This mean that, when the new laws come in on July 1, the Tweed landfill site will not have to pay for any liabilities.
