Competitive grant schemes can be effectively used to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions but they are not sufficient to produce large scale abatement at a low cost.  Competitive grant schemes are best used in conjunction with other policies including a broad based carbon price.  The carbon price is able to achieve large scale abatement at

The political class in Australia needs to overcome its tendency for picking individual climate change policies. Instead we need to take a broader approach to climate change that includes a range of policies if we hope to do our fair share in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in order to avoid dangerous climate change.

Coal seam gas (CSG) is a controversial way of extracting natural gas. While many Australians hold strong views against it, a surprising number are only vaguely aware of the issue. In addition to feeling generally uninformed, many people also express unease about CSG because of the controversy surrounding it. A survey conducted by The Australia

Gas prices in eastern Australia are going to rise substantially. These price rises are not driven by a lack of supply but rather by an increase in demand. Once the eastern Australian gas market is connected to the world gas market, domestic gas producers will be able to sell at the world netback price –

The federal government is pouring an extra half a billion dollars into taxpayer-funded subsidies to the mining industry, research by The Australia Institute has found. The Institute’s new paper Pouring more fuel on the fire reveals the booming sector has been propped up even further over the past year and now receives $4.5 billion from

The government would have had an additional $38 billion for last year’s federal government budget and would have collected an extra $169 billion over the past seven years had it not been for unsustainable income tax cuts that were made in the lead up to the GFC. Had the income tax cuts not been made,

Since the beginning of the mining boom Australia’s rural sector has lost $61.5 billion in export income. This includes $18.9 billion in 2011-12 alone. These losses have occurred because the mining boom has forced the Australian dollar to historic highs. The damage the mining boom is doing to other sectors has created what has been

Summary Since the beginning of the mining boom Australia’s rural sector has lost $43.5 billion in export income. This includes $14.9 billion in 2010-11 alone. These losses have occurred because the mining boom has forced the Australian dollar to historic highs. The damage the mining boom is doing to other sectors has created what has

With increasing awareness of the dangers of climate change, the world is hunting for other forms of power generation that produce lower emissions of greenhouse gas. While gas is not a zero emissions energy source, it has come to be seen by some as a ‘bridging fuel’. In Australia an increasingly important source of gas

The Western Australian government together with Woodside proposes to build the Browse LNG precinct on James Price Point in the Kimberley region of Western Australia (WA). The evidence to support the state government’s claim that the precinct will deliver economic benefits is virtually non-existent. Indeed, a close reading of the scant evidence that is available

Arrow Energy plans to build a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant in Gladstone to export coal seam gas (CSG) from its reserves in the Surat and Bowen Basins. This construction project is proposed to occur at the same time as a large number of other projects in Gladstone such as the Yarwun Alumina Refinery Expansion,

The mining industry is receiving substantial assistance from Australian taxpayers worth more than $4 billion per year in subsidies and concessions from the Federal Government alone. Amazingly, this is at a time when the industry is earning record profits. Significantly, these subsidies and tax concessions do not even include the cost of providing the mining

The Australian mining boom has been driven by rapidly rising world commodity prices. Put simply, the world is now willing to pay much higher prices for our coal, iron ore, gold and other resources than they were 10 years ago. For example, gold prices have risen from about 400 $US/ounce in 2004 to about 1600

On the back of record high commodity prices the mining industry in Australia is experiencing an unprecedented period of expansion. The value of our mineral exports has increased to the point where they now make up more than half of the value of all our exports. This increase combined with the huge inflow of capital

The Gillard Government recently passed legislation which will, for the first time in Australia, see big polluters pay for their greenhouse gas emissions through a price on carbon. While the introduction of a carbon price will not in itself drive a substantial reduction in Australia’s emissions, it does begin to build the necessary policy infrastructure

In the 2007 federal election both major parties committed to introducing an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). By 2009 both parties agreed on an emissions reduction target of five per cent on 2000 levels by 2020. But since Tony Abbott became leader of the Liberal Party the bipartisan position for a reliance on a market based

The Coalition has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by five per cent on 2000 levels by 2020. It proposes to achieve this target with a “Direct Action Plan”: a competitive grant scheme that would buy greenhouse gas reductions from businesses and farmers. Over the past decade various Australian governments have announced more than seven

Coal seam gas (CSG) is a controversial way of extracting natural gas. While many Australians hold strong views against it, a surprising number are only vaguely aware of the issue. In addition to feeling generally uninformed, many people also express unease about CSG because of the controversy surrounding it. A survey conducted by The Australia