As small business owners grapple with what a carbon price means for them, others are asking a different question: what will it mean if the scheme is repealed?
Climate Bridge is a carbon project developer, with the world’s 12th biggest portfolio of projects. Established in 2006 by Melbourne Rhodes scholars Alex Wyatt and Cameron Hepburn, it helps build clean energy projects in China.
In basic terms, it does the analysis and paperwork so they can be registered to generate carbon credits under the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism.
Under the UN scheme, carbon credits are allocated to clean projects in developing countries that would not otherwise be viable. The logic is that the projects keep emissions in those countries lower than they would otherwise have been, and the credits allow big-emitting businesses in rich nations to meet greenhouse targets at lower cost than if they just cut pollution at home.
Climate Bridge spends up to three years getting projects audited and registered, buying the credits and selling them on to businesses.
Initially focused on Europe, it set up a Melbourne office in 2009 when both major parties backed emissions trading, kept a skeleton staff as political support fell and expanded to six after the scheme passed Parliament. It is now working on deals with Australian companies to buy credits once they are permitted in 2015. Business development manager Sarah Chapman said lack of bipartisan support for the scheme was holding businesses back.
”We expect to be the biggest supplier of credits into the Australian market, but the green economy is basically on hold due to the political uncertainty,” Ms Chapman said. ”We’re in a place where people are not investing in really dirty technologies, but are still holding back on big capital investments in clean ones that require a carbon price.”
The potential value of the ”green economy” is heavily contested, but a report this week by the Confederation of British Industry, representing 200,000 businesses, found it was meaningful: worth about £122 billion ($A185 billion) and a third of national growth last year.
Climate Bridge has 40 registered UN projects, mainly hydro and wind farms. It says they cut emissions by 9 million tonnes a year - equivalent to taking 2 million cars off the road.
The carbon credit market has been criticised by some environmentalists and the Coalition, who argue that all emissions cuts should be made in Australia.
Ms Chapman said the types of projects that were approved had tightened and it made sense to make cuts where they were cheapest.
”The vast majority of my colleagues are on the ground in China … It is not some kind of intangible thing, they are real projects reducing emissions.”
