Wayne Swan has taken the razor to a raft of green programs, particularly those aimed at cutting emissions from coal consumption, and mopped up a string of failed green programs in a budget that, as expected, makes little mention of the impending carbon tax.
While carbon capture and storage have borne the brunt of the cuts, the government has moved to wind up failed programs such as Green Loans, the Home Insulation Safety Program and Green Start.
The cutback to the Carbon Capture and Storage Flagships program has been slated to provide $420 million of the $22 billion in savings measures announced in the budget. Of this, $260m has been deferred beyond the forward estimates.
The government has also delivered on its election promise, cutting funding for the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute, one of former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s pet climate change programs. The cuts to the CCS Institute, which was charged with promoting the technology internationally, yield savings of $45m over two years from the next financial year.
Also cut was $12.8m over five years from the National Low Emissions Coal Initiative, which was designed to support the development and deployment of technologies to reduce emissions from coal use.
But some of the savings from the cuts to the CCS Flagships program have been used to create a $60.9m National CO2 Infrastructure Plan, which will fund exploration of geological basins for long-term storage hubs and the acquisition of CO2 storage data in basins in NSW, Victoria and Western Australia.
The CO2 Infrastructure Plan will also help fund a National CO2 drilling rig deployment strategy and a national CO2 storage and transport infrastructure assessment.
The budget papers provide small amounts of funding to tighten emissions standards for power stations. This includes the provision of $3.9m over four years to expand the energy efficiency opportunities program to include the electricity industry and enforce tougher guidelines for new power stations. This funding will enable the Resources Department to develop new emissions and carbon capture and storage-ready standards for all new coal-fired power stations.
An allocation of $800,000 will also be provided to “determine the scope and application of best practice standards for power stations”.
The budget provides funds for the wind-up of the Greens Loans program with $45m over two years to provide assistance to home sustainability assessors and manage the wind-up of the program. Of this, $15m will be provided to help uncontracted assessors who became accredited but were not offered work under the program. This will enable grants of up to $3000 to cover the costs of training fees, insurance, accreditation and police checks for people who qualified to become Green Loans assessors but did not get work.
A further $18m has been set aside for training assistance.
The cost of the mop-up of the Green Loans program will be paid for by the closure of the Green Start program, which provides savings of $209m over three years and was announced as part of the flood reconstruction package.
