Australia’s conservative Liberal-National government has reshaped the nation’s approach to reducing carbon emissions, turning the focus to backing a select few technologies and supporting heavy industry.
The plan has met with little support from the opposition Labor Party and considerable rejection from environment and green groups.
Energy Minister Angus Taylor today release a Technology Investment Roadmap that will guide $18 billion of government investments towards five priority technologies: hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, soil carbon, storage options and ‘low-carbon’ steel and aluminium production.
It’s a reversal of the government’s last attempt to set an energy policy, the government led by former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s technology-neutral National Energy Guarantee (NEG).
The NEG would have let the market determine how to meet targets on reliability and emissions reduction, while the Technology Investment Roadmap will fund particular approaches to helping industry reduce their emissions.
The roadmap includes price goals for each of the five priority areas, aiming to reach the point where the cost of the technology is competitive with existing alternatives.
For example, the federal government wants hydrogen production to cost less than $2 per kilogram by 2030, regardless of whether it is produced using renewable energy or fossil fuels.
For soil carbon, the goal is to reduce the cost of measurement to less than $3 per hectare per year, which would be a 90 per cent reduction.
The plan is reliant on the upper house Senate passing legislation that changes the investment rules of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) and the Clean Energy Regulator (CER), all announced last week by the federal government.
The federal government also wants fast-track approval of methods to reduce emissions that can be funded by the Emissions Reduction Fund, in particular, soil carbon and carbon capture and storage.
Mr Taylor outlined the details in a speech at the National Press Club in Canberra, where he re-enforced the government’s aversion to putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions.
“You either suppress emissions intensive economic activities, usually through some version of taxation, or you improve them,” Mr Taylor said.
“There is no third way. Australia cannot and should not damage its economy to reduce emissions.”
He stated that this roadmap will “drive around 130,000 jobs” and “avoid 250 million tonnes of emissions annually by 2040”.
The Technology Investment Roadmap is the plan the federal government will present as Australia’s long-term strategy for reducing emissions to the next round of global climate change talks, which was delayed this year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
While the government will focus almost all of its efforts on the five priority low-emissions technologies, the roadmap includes a hierarchy of other technological approaches to reducing emissions.
The government will look to remove barriers to “emerging and enabling technologies”, such as energy efficiency and electric car charging infrastructure.
“Emerging and enabling technologies will be included in the mandates of our technology investment agencies,” Mr Taylor told the National Press Club.
“Over time they may become priorities for us or they may drop off all together.”
There will be a “watching brief” approach to prospective technology being developed overseas, like small modular reactors and direct air capture.
On the bottom rung is solar, wind, coal and gas, all of which have been categorised as “mature technologies” that the government will only invest in when there is a clear market failure or where it would save jobs.
Labor’s Shadow Energy Minister Mark Butler described the roadmap as “useful” but argued it was not a comprehensive energy policy.
He said there was little point in having a roadmap it it had no destination.
“This is a roadmap to nowhere” Mr Butler said.
He also added it would do nothing for investment in the energy sector nor create jobs.
“There’s nothing in this roadmap that hasn’t been very well understood for years,” he said.
“To make an actual difference to Australian households and businesses you don’t need a description of technology that’s happening in the private sector around the world, you need an energy policy.
“You need investment rules that will actually see this technology built rather than just be written about.”
The Climate Council environmental think tank responded by expressing its strong concerns about the federal government’s technology roadmap because it emphasises the continued use of fossil fuels.
“How many roads must the Liberal-National government walk down before it has a viable climate plan?” asked the Climate Council’s CEO Amanda McKenzie.
“This is supposed to be a plan to get down pollution, but it bypasses solutions that are ready now and it will not significantly reduce emissions for more than a decade.
“Why is the Liberal-National government pushing fossil fuels which are driving more intense bushfires?” she said.
“The government must step up and set a target of net zero emissions well before 2050.
“Most other countries, including the United Kingdom, will take a net zero emissions target to the next international climate negotiations while Australia will be showing up with a marketing brochure,” she said.
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