Let’s ‘double down’ on green reforms, not tear them up

A veteran of climate change says the move to a decarbonised economy just has to happen.

Market Institute chief executive John Connor was on this year’s Green List. Picture: Nick Cubbin

The Carbon Market Institute (CMI) is an independent association of about 150 member companies across the carbon chain from primary producers, Indigenous organisations, carbon service providers, banks, advisory firms and emission intensive companies.

Its mission is to support best practice in decarbonisation and market-based climate solutions. Its chief executive since 2019 has been John Connor, a well-known climate action advocate with a career spanning three decades.

He spent 10 years at policy think tank The Climate Institute, then two years in Suva supporting Fiji’s COP23 Presidency, before zeroing in on investment implementation at CMI. Connor is among those included on The Australian’s annual Top 100 Green Energy Players.

You’ve been working at this for three decades, and suddenly it feels as tough as it’s ever been to sell the green revolution. How’s your optimism?

I am a professional optimist and try to keep things moving forward. The transition to a clean economy is hard. It is a political economy shift, not just a theoretical economic shift, so it’s not totally surprising that it’s tough. That we keep getting side swiped by other issues is a disappointment, but my job is to keep moving forward.

Have we done enough consultation, for example with farmers, about the impact and cost of infrastructure like transmission lines?

We are talking about a multi-decadal change with real challenges and opportunities at local levels. So to get a durable transition, government and industry need to invest in social support and licence. That’s happening but we need to learn and build while dealing with criticism and detractors.

So the move to a decarbonised economy is an unstoppable revolution?

Well, it has to be. The cost of doing nothing is just too great. There are certainly naysayers, but I look back to a time when we were pushing for a 5 per cent renewable energy target and now we are having days at 70 per cent renewables across the national electricity market…So while it’s clear we are in the middle of a climate crisis and a biodiversity crisis, I’ve also had the experience to be able to look back and see how far we’ve actually travelled.

What would you identify as the biggest challenges to the transition in the shorter term?

I think it is understanding that we need to double down on key reforms, not tear them down. We’ve got a lot of false binaries out there, for example around carbon markets. Some say it’s an “either or”: you’re either decarbonising or you’re doing offsets, credits for climate action elsewhere. We need both. Carbon markets are changing from offset neutrality to net zero alignment. That means companies must have a fair dinkum decarbonisation plan but, as plans are developed, they should also be investing in net zero solutions. That’s something the public hasn’t understood.

What do you think about nuclear power as an option?

Australia’s coal-fired plants are expiring through the 2030s and there’s no way we can get a solid nuclear option up in that time. Too many people have made the perfect the enemy of the good. There are things that we can do right now, using the technology available right now. In terms of reducing emissions, it matters more what we do in the next decade than the last decade to 2050. In the long term, who knows, we may need to look at these things, if these small modular nuclear reactors come up, but nuclear is not an option for the current crisis. –