Today, the Australian Labor Party, announced their climate policy, committing to an aggressive 43% reduction on 2005 emission levels, not by 2050, but by 2030, just 9 years away.
The coalition Liberal/National policy is to reduce carbon emissions by 26-28% by 2030, which creates a 15-17% difference between the policies.
The ALP policy includes great news for fans of electric vehicles. With the transport sector responsible for a significant percentage of emissions, it has to be tackled to meet any serious target in emissions reductions.
If Labor wins the next federal election, due in early 2022, they will remove some of the taxes on Electric Vehicles to reduce the up-front price and make affordability easier for more Australians.
Labor’s Powering Australia plan will:
- Upgrade the electricity grid to fix energy transmission and drive down power prices.
- Make electric vehicles cheaper with an electric car discount and Australia’s first National Electric Vehicle Strategy.
- Adopt the Business Council of Australia’s recommendation for facilities already covered by the Government’s Safeguard Mechanism that emissions be reduced gradually and predictably over time, to support international competitiveness and economic growth – consistent with industry’s own commitment to net zero by 2050.
- Protect the competitiveness of Emissions Intensive Trade Exposed industries by ensuring they will not face a greater constraint than their competitors.
- Allocate up to $3 billion from Labor’s National Reconstruction Fund to invest in green metals (steel, alumina and aluminium); clean energy component manufacturing; hydrogen electrolysers and fuel switching; agricultural methane reduction and waste reduction.
- Provide direct financial support for measures that improve energy efficiency within existing industries and develop new industries in Regional Australia through a new Powering the Regions Fund.
- Roll out 85 solar banks around Australia to ensure more households can benefit from rooftop solar.
- Install 400 community batteries across the country.
- Demonstrate Commonwealth leadership by reducing the Australian Public Service’s own emissions to net zero by 2030.
- Invest in 10,000 New Energy Apprentices and a New Energy Skills Program.
- Establish a real-world vehicle fuel testing program to inform consumer choice.
- Work with large businesses to provide greater transparency on their climate related risks and opportunities.
- Re-establish leadership by restoring the role of the Climate Change Authority, while keeping decision-making and accountability with Government and introducing new annual Parliamentary reporting by the Minister.
They will also create federal policy for electric vehicles, in stark contrast to the existing setup that essentially leaves states to do the heavy lifting. This has been immediately welcomed by the Electric Vehicle Council of Australia.
Labor’s Climate commitment is set to cost the taxpayer $683 Million dollars, but be co-invested by private businesses, to the tune of $76 billion of investment.
with an estimate that it will create 604,000 new clean energy jobs. 5 out of 6 of these new jobs will be in regional areas. This isn’t terribly surprising given the plan to reduce emissions includes further renewables, and the land for solar and wind farms are predominantly in regional locations.
Labor will support a continued increase of renewables as an energy mix on the national grid, and given renewable energy is now cheaper than legacy power generation, expects the average annual energy bill to drop by $275 by 2025.
The Government will lead the transition, committing to start purchasing electric vehicles in a serious way, with 75% of new vehicle purchases by 2025 to be EVs.
Opposition leader Anthony Albanese says the target is similar to comparable countries like Canada that has a 40-50% target by 2030.
More information on Labor’s Powering Australia climate plan is available here.