Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard today announced a proposed Clean Energy Target (CET) scheme that would aim to generate an additional 30,000 gigawatt hours of renewable and low emission energy by 2020.
A program that will require about 280 Victorian facilities to develop plans to better manage energy, water and waste is likely to deliver a net economic benefit of about $65.4 million over 10 years, says a regulatory impact statement for the proposal.
Parliament today passed legislation requiring larger greenhouse gas emitters to report their emissions and energy use from mid-2008 – but only after the government toned down a provision that will allow it to override reporting requirements in state and territory laws.
New Zealand will begin phasing-in emissions trading from the start of next year, with all major sectors, including agriculture, progressively included by 2013.
A water efficiency labelling scheme administered by the federal government is not well enforced and about 10% of the products authorised to use the label carry a ‘zero stars’ version that means they don’t meet basic water efficiency standards.
The NSW Land and Environment Court yesterday ordered Sydney chemical company Nalco Australia to contribute $50,000 to an environmental project and pay $10,000 in costs after about 9,000 litres of ethylene glycol escaped into a waterway leading to Botany Bay.
The NSW environment department today proposed an overhaul of the state’s main regulation on waste. The changes would alter the rules governing the use of waste as a fuel and its application to land, simplify the waste facility licensing regime and amend some criteria for non-waste environmental licensing.
The Federal Government has introduced a bill that will provide tax breaks for carbon sink forests established for the primary purpose of sequestering carbon.
Australia could conduct its first auction of greenhouse gas emission permits in November 2009, just a month after the proposed deadline for companies to lodge their first annual greenhouse gas emissions reports, according to a discussion paper on permit auctioning issued by the states today.
Most Australian businesses are prepared to pay to help reduce carbon emissions but don’t understand the likely impact of emissions trading and don’t know their own carbon footprint, an Australian Industry Group survey has found.
