The Australian Government recently released a Green Paper describing in more detail its proposal for an Emission Reduction Fund (ERF), the principle component of its Direct Action climate policy. The ERF will sit alongside renewable energy and reforestation policies, but is designed to do the bulk of the heavy lifting as the Government looks for some 430 million tonnes of cumulative reductions (see below) over the period 2014 to 2020. The ERF will have initial funding of about AU$ 1.55 billion over the forward period, with the money being used to buy project reductions (as Australian Carbon Credit Units or ACCUs) from the agriculture and industrial sectors of the economy by reverse auction. These reductions will be similar to those that are created through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) available under the Kyoto Protocol.
Although the fund and reverse auction process are discussed in some detail and appear as central to the policy framework, this may not be the case as the system is rolled out and the full framework developed. The issue that comes from such an approach to emissions reduction is that despite buying project reductions from the economy, the overall emissions pathway for the economy as a whole still does not follow the expected trajectory. The ERF may also encounter a number of issues seen with the CDM, all of which are some form of additionality;
- Determining if there would have been higher emissions had the project not happened. Perhaps the reduction is something that would have happened anyway or the counterfactual position of higher emissions would never have actually happened. For example, an energy efficiency gain is claimed in terms of a CO2 reduction but the efficiency gain is subject to some amount of rebound due to increased use of the more efficient service, therefore negating a real reduction in emissions. Further, the counterfactual of higher emissions might never have existed as the original less efficient process would not have operated at the higher level.
- Double counting – the project presumes a reduction that is already being counted by somebody else within the economy as a whole. For example, an energy efficiency gain in a certain part of the supply chain is claimed as an emissions reduction, but this is already intrinsic to the overall emissions outcome for another process.
- Rent seeking – project proponents seek government money for actions already underway or even construct an apparent reduction.
The Australian emissions inventory will be measured bottom up based on fuel consumption, changes in forest cover and land use and established estimates / protocols for agriculture, coal mine fugitive emissions, landfill etc. It will not be possible to simply subtract the ERF driven reductions from such a total unless they are separate sequestration based reductions, e.g. soil carbon. This is because the ERF reductions are themselves part of the overall emissions of the economy.
The Green Paper clearly recognizes theses issues and proposes that the overall emissions pathway through to 2020 must be safeguarded. In Section 4 it discusses the need for “An effectively designed framework to discourage emissions growth above historical levels . . . “, with associated terminology including phrases such as “covered entities”, “baseline emission levels”, “action required from businesses” and “compliance”. The safeguarding mechanism, rather than being a supplementary element of Direct Action, could end up becoming the main policy measure for decarbonisation if significant CO2 reductions are not achieved under the ERF. While this may not be the objective that the Government seeks, it does mean that the implementation of the safeguard mechanism needs to incorporate the design thinking that would otherwise be applied to the development of intended emission trading systems, such as the Alberta Specified Gas Emitters Regulation.
As currently described, the safeguarding mechanism looks like a baseline-and-credit system, with the baseline established at facility level either on an intensity or absolute emissions basis (both are referred to in the Green Paper). Should a facility exceed the baseline it could still achieve compliance by purchasing ACCUs from the market, either from project developers or other facilities that have over performed against their own baselines. Although the Government have made it very clear that they will not be establishing a system such as cap-and-trade that collects revenue from the market, facilities will nevertheless face compliance obligations and may have to purchase reduction units at the prevailing market price.
The level of trade and the need for facilities to purchase ACCUs will of course depend on the stringency of the baselines and this remains to be seen, however in setting these the Government will need to be mindful of the overall national goal and its need to comply with that. The development of a full baseline and credit trading system also raises the prospect of the market out-bidding the Government for ACCUs, particularly if the Government sets its own benchmark price for purchase, as is indicated in the Green Paper.
As Australia moves from a cap-and trade system under the Carbon pricing Mechanism (CPM) to the ERF and its associated safeguarding mechanism, the main change for the economy will be distributional in nature, given that a 5% reduction must still be achieved and the same types of projects should eventually appear. However, the biggest challenge facing any system in Australia could be around speedy design and implementation, given that the time remaining before 2020 is now very limited and the emission reduction projects being encouraged will themselves take time to deliver.