The Daily Telegraph has reported that the Emissions Trading Scheme, which received bipartisan support this week, will bump up the bills for Australian households by as much as $1,100.
This includes a 20 per cent hike on electricity bills by 2012, a 5 per cent increase in grocery prices and a reduction in the compensation paid to voters to the tune of $5.8 billion over the next decade.
Further analysis from the Sydney Morning Herald suggests that the households that will be hit with the extra $1,100 in bills will be dual income households with two children. However, under the compensation scheme, low-to-medium income earners will have some of that amount offset, while dual income households with three children will end up getting $300 more than what the scheme will cost them.
Although industry response has been mixed (based on the amount of compensation they stand to receive), the scientific community is getting behind the deal. Professor Peter Newman from the Curtin University of Technology commented that “It’s a historic day when we have a bipartisan approach to solving climate change. The journey is just beginning, but this is an extremely important first step. The CPRS (Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme) is a front-end mechanism for the economy which is for the big users of energy, but we also need lots of end-user mechanisms especially for householders.”Professor David Doepel from Murdoch University adds ““Creating a price for carbon, coupled with the already passed renewable energy target will create, for the first time, certainty for renewable energy researchers (and carbon reduction research) with regard to commercial pathways for promising technology. The lack of a positive investment environment in Australia has previously made it very difficult to commercialise technology in Australia. This ‘change of climate’ is therefore very welcome news for the research community.”
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