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SILICON
SILIC
CHIP
www.siliconchip.com.au
Publisher & Editor-in-Chief
Leo Simpson, B.Bus., FAICD
Production Manager
Greg Swain, B.Sc. (Hons.)
Technical Editor
John Clarke, B.E.(Elec.)
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Mauro Grassi, B.Sc. (Hons), Ph.D
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2 Silicon Chip
Publisher’s Letter
Big business is driving the push
for a carbon price
As most readers will be aware, Australians have two
major concerns about energy and energy prices. The largest group would appear to be those who are concerned
about the ever-increasing prices for energy, whether it
be for electricity, gas, petrol or dieseline. This concern
is real and prices are set to go up at an ever-increasing
rate, particularly for electricity, because of the lack of
new power stations being built and the increasing subsidies being offered to costly renewable energy sources
such as wind and solar power.
The other group of Australians who are concerned about energy prices are those
who are actively promoting the idea of a “carbon price”, particularly now that the
Australian government has postponed any immediate action on climate change or
an emissions trading scheme (ETS). Probably you think that “green” politicians are
behind this push and it is true that there is quite a lot of coverage of the statements
made by green groups in the media. However, it is not the greens who are doing
most of the pushing – it is big business.
To get an idea of the big business push, you only have to look at “Carbon Expo
Australasia 2010” planned for Melbourne in October this year. It is supposedly
aimed at “energising the low carbon economy”. Now you might think that this is
all about “feel good” stuff like installing solar panels on your roof and using waterless toilets but you would be wrong. You only have to look at the list of businesses
and business groups involved to have serious misgivings.
A partial list includes the Carbon Markets & Investors Association, Investors
Group on Climate Change, Environmental Business Australia, Asia-Pacific Investors Trading Forum, AGL and Bloomberg New Energy Finance. These people are
involved because they can see big opportunities to make lots of money if the government can be persuaded to bring in a carbon price or carbon taxes. If either of
these do eventuate, energy prices can be expected to go up at an even faster rate.
Last year’s CarbonExpo conference was seen as a build-up to the Copenhagen
Conference which ended in disarray. The moderator at one of the sessions at CarbonExpo last year was Dr Rajendra Pachauri – he is the same person who claimed
that all the Himalayan glaciers would melt within 30 years! Nobody is giving that
any credence any more.
You can download the draft program for this year’s conference at http://carbonexpo.com.au/uploads/file/2010/2010DraftProgram2406.pdf and there you can see
that they plan to discuss matters such as “raising finance for low carbon projects
from institutional investors”, “the state of carbon markets”, “Interaction with Asia
– issues and opportunities for interacting with Asia as the region transitions to a
low-carbon economy”, “Carbon capture & storage”, biofuels and so on.
None of this is good news for people concerned about increasing energy prices.
It is all about looking for new ways to make money – lots of it and governmentmandated to boot.
In the session entitled “Australia’s role in international action & markets” they
will include consideration of: a science update – how has the science shaped up
over the last 12 months? What is science’s latest view of the emissions reduction
imperative? How has science responded to the rise of climate change scepticism
– in terms of content & process? Can the carbon market expect increased support
from strengthened climate change science? Does this sound like a balanced forum?
It seems that unless there are big changes in the political scene in Australia, we
will be paying much, much more for energy in the near future.
Leo Simpson
siliconchip.com.au
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