| Senator Nick Xenophon has brought back a carbon trading scheme to Australia and nobody seems to have noticed. Quietly tucked behind the headlines from the Palmer United Party and the government was the mention of Senator Xenophon inserting a ‘Safeguard Mechanism’ into the Direct Action legislation.
The mechanism creates the framework for a baseline and credit system which is similar to a cap-and-trade system in that both are market based methods to arrive at a price for carbon. While the specific details of the Safeguard Mechanism have yet to be determined, conceptually any company who currently emits more than 100,000 tonnes of CO2 annually will be required from 1 July 2016 to keep their emissions below a predetermined baseline level or face penalties...........................................Full Article: Source |