Antinuclear

Put simply, this means that a company that was planning to spend a million dollars on cutting carbon could ask the government to pay for just half of it. While that sounds like a win – a million dollars’ worth of emissions cuts for only half a million dollars of public money – bear in mind that those cuts would have happened anyway, at no expense to the taxpayer…..

Previous schemes such as the Kyoto Protocol have guarded against this potential for taxpayer-funded corporate windfalls, by requiring projects to demonstrate ‘additionality’ – that is, proving that they would not have proceeded without government help.

Baseline call

The second problem hinges on the fact that emissions reductions cannot be calculated without reference to a previous “baseline” level. But the government has delayed its decision on how emissions baselines will be determined until mid-2015. How these are decided will be of greatest interest to the biggest emitters………

Long deadlines, minor penaltiesYet under the government’s current plan, even a company that is given a favourable historic baseline, and then exceeds it anyway, could be given plenty of leeway…….

What’s more, in cases where a company routinely fails to meet emissions targets, the government says it does not want the policy to be punitive. Therefore companies could well not comply, without suffering significant financial consequences.

The proposal is open for comment until February 21, and the plan faces plenty more scrutiny, particularly when new Senators take their seats in July. Those Senators also control the fate of the previous government’s carbon price, which has already been repealed in the lower house…..http://theconversation.com/three-major-loopholes-in-the-direct-action-climate-plan-21838