The Nub of the Houston Report

Updated on Tuesday, August 14, 2012 at 19:51 by MCJ

Updated on Tuesday, August 14, 2012 at 20:46 by MCJ

Updated on Sunday, August 19, 2012 at 13:57 by MCJ

I’m far from an expert on asylum seekers, and am still trying to wrap my head around all the stuff in the Report of the Expert Panel on Asylum Seekers (the ‘Houston Report’). Here’s the nub of the matter, though, as far as I understand it – this is essentially thinking out loud, so please do correct me if I’m wrong.

Problem: Asylum seekers are risking, and losing their lives coming to Australia by boat – as ‘irregular maritime arrivals (IMAs) – rather than waiting to be processed in transition countries.

Cause: Asylum seekers believe (rightly?) that they and their family members will be accepted as refugees in Australia more quickly than if they went through the ‘proper’ channels.

Proposed solution: IMAs should not get any advantages over asylum seekers coming to Australia through approved channels, so they will instead be taken and processed somewhere else, with no chance of arriving in Australia more rapidly than if they’d used the proper channels

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A Comment on the Political Discussion of Electricity Regulations

With her speech to the the Energy Policy Institute of Australia on Tuesday, the Prime Minister Julia Gillard has moved (or at least expanded) the discussion of electricity regulations from the roundtable meetings and conferences of industry, academia, and government to the political arena. Hurrah..?

A few points:

Are there problems with dividend policy, reliability standards, and peak demand? Yes.

Have the incentives in the existing regulations led some states to act in a manner that has unnecessarily raised prices for consumers (and thus led to increased profits for the states)? Very probably.

Has this been going on for several years, including under Labor governments? Yes – but so what?

Why shouldn’t we fix these problems now, regardless of why they’ve been raised?

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The Effect of the Carbon Price on Electricity Prices

Updated on Friday, September 13, 2013 at 18:11 by MCJ

Updated on Sunday, November 3, 2013 at 22:39 by MCJ

In an otherwise good article, Peter Martin today wrote that

[the TD Securities Melbourne Institute price index] reports a jump in electricity prices of 14.9 per cent and a jump in household gas prices of 10.3 per cent, almost all of which would have been due to the carbon tax. [emphasis mine]

This is incorrect, and, unfortunately, he is not the first journalist to make this mistaken claim. Evidence to the contrary be found in, for example, the reports from the relevant authorities in states that regulate their electricity prices:

New South Wales

IPART’s “Final Report – Changes in regulated electricity retail prices from 1 July 2012”

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Laggard to Leader: a Review

Updated on Tuesday, July 24, 2012 at 16:41 by MCJ

Beyond Zero Emissions, the non-for-profit climate change group, yesterday released the latest in their series of plans to get Australia to a state of zero emissions (or below): Laggard to Leader; How Australia can lead the world to zero carbon prosperity.

The report springs from the observation, also reported by e.g. Crikey on Friday, that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is failing to achieve the actions required to prevent dangerous anthropogenic climate change. It then goes beyond this to suggest new means of addressing the problem, in which Australia leads the world to a zero carbon future.

Sound utopian? It’s actually reasonably well argued, by and large, even if it’s difficult to see our current crop of politicians implementing many of the report’s suggestions.

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Pricing Carbon Has Passed the Acid Test

I am quoted in today’s Sydney Morning Herald piece on the carbon pricing scheme.

Tomorrow, the nation steps over the threshold of carbon pricing into a domain where pumping out greenhouse gas has an economic price as well as an environmental one. The federal government’s Clean Energy Bill is a compromise with which no one is entirely happy. But the consensus of economists is that it is likely to work well enough to cut emissions by 5 per cent, the minimum supported by the major parties.

“If you assume the political will to implement the scheme is there, a huge ‘if’, then the question is whether the scheme is designed well enough to achieve its goals - I think it is,” says Martin Jones, a researcher at the Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets and University of NSW. “The mechanism is an effective one: emissions trading schemes have proven records of reducing emissions.”

Does It Make Sense for Australia to Restrict Its Export of Fossil Fuels?

Once we dig up and sell the coal, are we still responsible for the emissions? ‘Stop exporting fossil fuels’ has not just economic, but moral components, given that much of our fuels go to developing countries.

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Wish One Is ALWAYS for More Wishes

At a party celebrating the 5th birthday of the Centre for Policy Development, I was asked the following question:

“If you had three wishes to change the world to help the environment, but that change had to occur through political processes, what would those wishes be?”

I found the question fascinating, and pondered it for a minute or two. Think about your own answers for a while, if you like. (You know it’s a happening party when people stare into the middle distance rubbing their chins thoughtfully for a while.)

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Surrendering to the Idea of a Price Floor

From July 2015, the Australian federal government will set the price of the permits in its emissions trading scheme free – within limits. The government intends to introduce a price floor and price ceiling until at least 2017/18.

This is good news for emission reduction activities whose viability depends on prices several years hence, such as larger, more complex projects. Further, the goal of abatement at least-cost should be balanced against the goal of abating as rapidly as possible; should reaching current targets be cheaper than expected, a floor price can ensure a minimum level of spending on abatement.

Last December, the government released a discussion paper and called for submission on the price floor, which combines a reserve price for Australian carbon units at auction with an ‘international unit surrender charge’ that ensures international carbon credits cost at least as much as domestic units. Four options are being considered for the international unit surrender charge.

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New South Wales Bins Carbon Trading Scheme

Updated on Thursday, April 5, 2012 at 13:50 by MCJ

Updated on Friday, April 13, 2012 at 18:58 by MCJ

I am quoted in today’s Point Carbon article on NSW’s announcement that GGAS is ending. (Readable with a free trial.)

Australian state New South Wales will abandon its Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme (GGAS) on July 1, when the federal government introduces a tax on CO2 emissions, state Energy Minister Chris Hartcher announced Thursday.

The baseline-and-credit scheme has operated since 2003, targeting emission cuts primarily in the state electricity sector, but also in industry and forestry.

 The phase-out was expected, but leaves market participants with 16 million surplus credits that will be ineligible for use in the nationwide scheme.

 This spurred Minister Hartcher to demand in local media Thursday that the federal government compensate the credit holders.

 However, market observers dismissed Hartcher’s claims.

 “It’s been clear from the outset of GGAS to all participants and government that GGAS would finish when a national carbon pricing scheme started,” said Martin Jones, a researcher at the University of New South Wales.

 “The problem of excess supply and an upcoming end date have been on the radar for at least half a decade, and insufficient efforts to address it have little to do with the federal government,” he told Point Carbon News.

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State Climate Schemes Are Still Worthwhile under a Carbon Price

In justifying their recent abandonment of state-based climate schemes, the governments of Queensland and Victoria have both claimed that the schemes will be redundant under the federal emissions trading scheme (ETS) that begins in July. Yet this justification is only a smokescreen, as a carbon price can well exist with other environmental and climate schemes.

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