Coalition plan 'to lift carbon output 13pc'

KEVIN Rudd has sought to torpedo Tony Abbott's new climate change policy by saying the plan would drive up carbon emissions by 13 per cent.

Biochar

KEVIN Rudd has sought to torpedo Tony Abbott's new climate change policy, releasing normally confidential advice saying the plan would not slash the nation's carbon emissions, but drive them up by 13 per cent.

But the opposition has rejected the Department of Climate Change brief as dodgy, branding the government as desperate to counter a public backlash against its planned carbon emissions trading scheme. A day after the Opposition Leader produced a $3.2 billion "direct action" policy on climate change instead of an ETS, the government produced a departmental brief that said the plan would not be sufficient to meet its stated target of reducing emissions by 5 per cent by 2020.

"We believe that proposed scheme would deliver less than a third of the required abatement for the 5 per cent target at the proposed funding level," said the departmental brief produced last night.

"The result of this would be that emissions in 2020 would be 13 per cent above 2000 levels if no other policies were put in place."

The advice came after Mr Abbott used question time to highlight Treasury predictions that Mr Rudd's proposed carbon emissions trading scheme would drive power prices up 19 per cent.

On Tuesday, Mr Abbott said he could achieve the Prime Minister's 5 per cent target with direct action to reduce emissions.

He said the Coalition would create a $2.5 billion incentive fund for businesses to reduce or store carbon emissions, and proposed planting 20 million trees by 2020.

It would also create a new $1000 subsidy for consumers to buy solar hot water heaters on top of existing subsidies.

Yesterday, Mr Abbott, inspecting a solar heating system on a house in Canberra, said this would allow people to buy a $4000 system for as little as $400.

Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner ridiculed the Abbott plan.

He labelled it as "Dr Abbott's miracle cure for climate change".

Late yesterday, after Mr Abbott stalked Mr Rudd through question time with demands that he justify his "great big new tax on everything", Climate Change Minister Penny Wong released the two-page departmental brief, prepared by her department's deputy secretary Blair Comley.

It said the policy would not deliver the 140 million-tonne reduction in emissions necessary to meet the 5 per cent target.

"The takeaway point is that we do not believe it is realistic to expect any more than around 40 million tonnes of abatement in 2020 using this mechanism if the scheme is capped at $12 billion on average," the brief said.

It added that Mr Abbott's proposed emissions reduction fund was "far more complex" than Mr Abbott had suggested and that it would "certainly be more difficult to implement than the CPRS".

It also said Australia's potential to store carbon in soil - which is a key element of the Abbott plan - was "highly uncertain due to low rainfall and variable climate". "There are some potentially low-cost soil-carbon opportunities through changed management in crop systems.

"However, these represent less than 10 per cent of the feasible abatement identified by the Department of Climate Change."

Coalition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt last night scoffed at the attempt to discredit the Abbott policy as "dodgy".

"This is just another example of the desperation of the government on this issue," said Mr Hunt.

He said the government had been "hawking" inaccurate information about the scheme to journalists for days.

"The Coalition's direct action plan will deliver environmental benefits and meet our emissions targets without the need for a great big new tax on everything," he said.

"It is fully costed and the estimated emissions reductions have been verified by Frontier Economics."

Earlier yesterday, Mr Abbott produced 800 pages of advice from the Treasury website designed to help people understand emissions trading, arguing that the government's scheme was so complex that even Mr Rudd could not explain it in simple terms.

He said the advice confirmed that the CPRS would drive up power prices by 18 per cent.

Mr Rudd then conceded it was expected to drive power prices up by 19 per cent over two years.

But the Prime Minister stood firm, saying that while Mr Abbott wanted taxpayers to fund his plan, the government would tax polluters and compensate 92 per cent of families for the impact on their pockets, including the increased power costs.

"They reach their hand into the pockets of taxpayer and churn that money directly into the pockets of the big polluters," Mr Rudd said.

"That is the Liberal Party churn."