Andrew Liveris says Morrison government should set a carbon price of up to $US80 a tonne
Andrew Liveris, one of the key architects behind Scott Morrison’s gas-led recovery plan, says Australia should set a carbon price of up to $US80 ($109) a tonne.
Andrew Liveris, one of the key architects behind Scott Morrison’s gas-led recovery plan, says Australia should set a carbon price of up to $US80 ($109) a tonne.
And the business community would be pressuring the government to step up its commitments to emissions reductions, he said.
“Australia had one 12 years ago,” Mr Liveris told a UBS conference on Monday. “It is time we had one again.”
But the former chief executive of American industrial giant Dow Chemicals, said Australia had emerged from the Glasgow climate summit with a better image than when it went into it.
“Because of all the negative publicity leading up to it, we started from behind because the perception was we were recalcitrant,” he said. “I think that was unfair. (Energy Minister) Angus Taylor has a very full calendar and he lobbied very hard.”
Mr Liveris told the conference it was time for business to lead the way in pushing for stricter policies to reduce emissions. He said there were some positive developments in Glasgow including India’s announcement it planned to move to carbon zero by 2070.
While he said Glasgow did not go far enough in eliciting agreements which would help reduce global warming to 1.5C he said he felt that was some progress made at the summit.
“The follow through will be pushed a lot by the business community. The allocators of capital will now have mechanisms to hold companies to account,” Mr Liveris said.
Heavyweight investors have already begun increasing the pressure on some of the country’s largest carbon emitters, with new analysis concluding the boards of 15 companies – including AGL, BHP, Qantas and Woolworth – still don’t see climate change as a material or existential risk.
That was the conclusion of a report released on Monday by the Investor Group on Climate Change, which represents investors with total funds under management of more than $2 trillion.
Of the 15 companies, 14 have net-zero emission targets. Incitec Pivot is the sole outlier.
Speaking from California at a conference hosted by investment bank UBS on Monday, Mr Liveris also said Australia should repurpose its ageing coal power plant fleet with nuclear technology.
He said small modular nuclear reactors were being tested in places such as the US and Scandinavia. Mr Liveris said he believed the technology of using small-scale reactors was “more proven” than the use of large-scale batteries to store renewable energy which was not yet proven.
He said Australia needed to overcome concerns about nuclear power and recognise its potential to reduce emissions.
“When (Australia is ready to accept nuclear power), it will see that nuclear energy can be used as electricity and heat,” Mr Liveris, who now sits on the board of the Saudi Aramco oil company, told the conference.
Mr Liveris said nuclear power represented a “strategic regional opportunity” for Australia.
Mr Liveris said the government should set a carbon price of between $US40 and $US80 a tonne – a figure he said emitters would be prepared to pay.
He said businesses needed to have a price on carbon to encourage them to cut back their investment in carbon-emitting ventures. A carbon price set “by the market” was not a tax, he said.
Mr Liveris said it was needed to establish a mechanism to “incentivise” businesses to cut back investments in carbon emitting operations. California has a model for carbon pricing and Europe has had a price for 16 years.
