Aluminium industry titan Mike Ferraro says the Albanese government’s emissions policy should recognise and reward businesses that have a lower carbon footprint than their peers, putting him at odds with the big miners that have cautioned against a quick transition to using “industry averages” to set emissions limits.

The “safeguards mechanism” policy is in the final stages of development, and a draft published in January showed Australia’s top 215 emitting sites would be given new emissions limits that would reduce by an average of 4.9 per cent per year until 2030.