Superpower: Australia's Low-Carbon Opportunity

by Ross Garnaut

The challenge is to change the relationship between economic growth and emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change.

There is more explicit recognition that zero net emissions can be achieved through a combination of zero emissions for long-lived gases (carbon dioxide) and stable emissions for short-lived gases (methane).

$40 per tonne in 2008 prices to achieve a 2°C target.

The price of carbon is not a measure of the cost of mitigation.

For Australia, the low-cost opportunities include the electricity and land sectors.

The changes in the shape of the fish justify substantially stronger and earlier mitigation today. The framework used in 2008 would now justify a 1.5°C objective.

The carbon price should rise simply because income is forgone for no good reason if the atmosphere’s capacity to safely absorb greenhouse gases is not used at the rate of depletion that minimises costs of mitigation.

Keynes expressed the view that under mature capitalism (postulated to lie a century ahead when he wrote in 1931), capital would be cheap and abundant, with real interest rates near zero.

nearly all of the costs of renewable energy and storage are capital costs, while fuel represents the main cost of coal and gas power generation. Low interest rates therefore not only reduce the cost of low-emissions production, but improve its competitiveness against high-emissions alternatives.

Public funding for research and development, with a strong focus on low-cost carbon measurement technologies, needs to be made available to sequestration of carbon in soils, pastures, woodlands, forests and plantations.