Kerry Schott and Adam Bandt.Credit:Oscar Colman/Alex Ellinghausen
“The reason I am standing here doing so is that the safeguard mechanism is a really important policy measure to reduce emissions and as you know its passage through the Senate is proving difficult,” she will say,according to a draft copy of her speech.
Schott now chairs the Carbon Market Institute,which represents companies that generate,buy,and sell carbon credits to companies seeking to reduce their carbon footprint.
The federal government is aiming to legislate changes to the safeguard mechanism that would enable it to impose binding pollution caps on the nation’s 215 biggest polluters and force them to reduce their carbon footprint by about 5 per cent a year until the end of the decade.
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This reform is designed to contribute about 30 per cent of the cuts needed to deliver on Australia’s legally binding target to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas footprint by 43 per cent by 2030.
To achieve this goal,the scheme must begin by July 1 and Bowen needs parliament to approve one more element of the scheme – enabling polluters to earn and trade carbon credits – to make it work. But there are only three parliament sitting weeks left.
“If this date is delayed by even a year the emissions reduction targets of the facilities with the heaviest pollution become even more difficult to reach,” Schott will say.