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July 26, 2010
Australia may soon follow in the footsteps of other international markets with a 'cash for clunkers' program dubbed Cleaner Car Rebate, offering a $2000 boost to new car buyers trading in their old car.The ultimate aim is getting around 200,000 old vehicles off the nation's roads, and the program will offer a $2000 rebate on cars built before 1995. The rebate is part of a plan to cut vehicle emissions by one million tonnes, with mandatory emissions regulations to be introduced for new cars from 2015.
This is an excellent idea, as Australians own a lot of old motor cars, and those old cars guzzle a lot of petrol and they emit a lot of pollution. So how is this rebate to be paid for, given Labor's lean budget commitment? It is an expensive way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and it could be a subsidy for new 4 wheel drives.
'Cash for clunkers' will be funded by redirecting funds from the programs set up to increase the use of solar power and renewable energy, of course. Why isn't the money coming out of the subsidies to the polluting industries instead? These subsidies keep the cost of fossil fuel energy artificially low and make it harder for renewable energy to compete. They distort energy markets, encourage greater use of fossil fuels, create higher levels of greenhouse gas emissions and improve the profitability of energy companies that produce or use fossil fuels.
Electricity generation is the largest source of Australia’s internal greenhouse gas emissions, because of the high percentage of coal in the energy mix. It is also the easiest to transform to renewable energy.
Labor's climate change policy is a mess: it is ineffective and poorly targeted and it has little connection to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It is backing right away from putting a price on carbon and it is designed to strangle the emergence of a solar energy industry whilst pretending that it is supporting an infant industry.
Australian solar manufacturing has little chance of being at the forefront of the clean energy industry. It fears the impact on economic growth from a shift to a low carbon economy. Economic growth is the top priority of the state and it overrides other policy objectives, despite economic growth not delivering on its promise of well being.
Despite Australia being a sun-drenched country, other governments are making a much bigger effort to harness that solar power. Instead of focusing on the green jobs in the local solar industry, the focus is on the lost jobs in the fossil fuel industry. What has been decided by default is that Australia is not going to have an Australian manufacturing capability, and that instead of being net exporters of leading-edge renewable technology it is the importers of consumer goods in the clean energy area.
Although an ecologically sustainable and healthy energy system, based on efficient energy use and renewable energy sources, is now technologically and economically feasible for Australia, there is a lack of political will. Government energy policy since the Howard government aims to retard the development of energy from renewable electricity source, until such time as coal-fired power stations with CO2 capture and sequestration (and nuclear power stations for the Coalition) are available.
The argument is that given Australia's high level of fossil fuel reserves , it must remain substantially reliant on fossil fuels for energy needs and energy security. The argument is flawed. Australia also posses a high level of renewable resources in wind ans solar, but the Government does not argue that should therefore be reliant on these resources.
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It struck me as about as tokenistic a measure as Howard subsidising LPG conversions. Then I saw where the money was coming from and realised it's just plain bad.
I'm struggling to think of a single good thing Labor has done since Gillard took over, suggesting that the purported reasons for the coup were a crock.