BY AMY STOCKWELL
Want to be smooth, sophisticated and well-informed this election? Want to do it without touching a single policy paper or watching a single episode of Q&A? No problem. I’ve got your back. Welcome to Stox’s 5 minute guide to some of the policy and political issues that will dominate the 2013 Election.
So, let’s start with something easy, eh? How about: “Everything you need to know about the carbon tax and the emissions trading scheme”. [Relax, it’s all about garbage bags on your lawn…]
Tell me in two sentences…
For both the carbon tax and the emissions trading scheme (ETS), it’s about using economics (or the pressure of having to pay for something) to reduce the amount of carbon pollution that is released into the atmosphere. If you are a big polluting company, you have to pay to pollute.
What is a “carbon tax”?
A carbon tax is the price set by government that polluting companies will have to pay to release a certain amount of carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere. The current carbon price in Australia is $24.15 for every tonne of carbon emissions that the biggest 500 polluters release.
The carbon price is premised on a simple idea about human behaviour: if you have to pay for something, you’ll be more careful about how you use it.
A quick example: if every bag of garbage that your family generates costs you $24.15 to put out on the curb for collection, you’d pretty quickly be thinking about how you could cut down on the amount of packaging you use, how much stuff you can re-use or how much you could turn into compost. If you take action to reduce your garbage, there is a financial benefit to you (you will pay for fewer bags) – so you are motivated do it.
In the same way, putting a price on carbon creates an incentive for companies to reduce the amount of carbon pollution that they are releasing into the atmosphere, or to otherwise invest in cleaner technology or alternative ways of doing things.
In Australia, only the top 500 polluting companies are paying the carbon tax. You and I don’t pay the tax directly, but the cost of the tax may be (ok, *is*) passed on to us in higher prices for goods and services.
What’s an emissions trading scheme (ETS)?
Under an ETS, companies buy and sell permits to pollute. The only role for a government regulator is to set a cap on how much pollution can be emitted by all companies in total and then to initially divide up that cap between companies in the form of emissions permits. These permits give a business the right to pollute at a certain level. If a company doesn’t have enough permits to cover the amount of polluting that they want to do, they’ll need to buy permits from other companies who don’t need theirs (or reduce their emissions to the level of the permits they already have).
Going back to our bags of garbage example… Say your local council says: each family can only put out four bags of garbage each week. I live by myself, so I’m sweet: I only produce two bags of garbage each week. My neighbour has a big family and produces eight bags of garbage every week. I pop over and offer to sell to my neighbour the two spare bags of garbage that I am not using.
Top Comments
That's an excellent introduction. However, it's worth adding a few more details.
First, both Carbon Tax (thru tax) or an ETS (thru purchase of permits) are, in fact, carbon pricing schemes (as opposed to taxpayer-funded DA in which Govt pays polluters to reduce CO2e emissions).
Second, despite now entrenched political rhetoric, the current scheme is not a Carbon Tax but an ETS involving a fixed-price permits transitional ETS 1st phase followed by floating-price permits and a cap on number of permits 2nd standard ETS phase. I.e exactly the same ETS type as Rudd/Turnbull ETS.
It's also important to remember that both 1st & 2nd ETS phase are already legislated - Rudd/Shorten 'terminating carbon tax' political rhetoric means moving to 2nd phase of the ETS 1 year earlier whereas Abbott's 'repealing carbon tax' means removing the current ETS legislation covering both fixed AND floating-price phase.
For more technical details please see:
Explainer: ETS vs CT vs DA http://goo.gl/9fotFM
Thank you! All too often the news doesn't actually explain anything. This is a great article and I'm not sure when the last time was I read such unbiased reporting. More of this please! Help me understand the big issues!