The Greens say they could support the Albanese government’s changes to the safeguard mechanism – a key climate policy – if it agreed to pause new fossil fuel developments until the parliament has dealt with planned changes to national environment laws.
The Greens’ leader, Adam Bandt, said he could be open to other ways of dealing with coal and gas other than the outright ban it has proposed, including a suggestion by the Climate Council that the government halt approvals until reform of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act is worked through later this year.
The minor party is pushing for the EPBC Act to include a climate trigger, which would for the first time require the environment minister to consider the climate impact of a major development during the approval process.
The environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, has not supported a climate trigger but Labor has backed one in the past. The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, introduced an unsuccessful climate trigger bill while opposition environment spokesperson in 2005.
Speaking on Guardian Australia’s Australian Politics podcast, Bandt raised the Climate Council proposal and said the Greens were happy to also look at other suggestions as long as they dealt with “the desire to keep opening up coal and gas mines and also the fact that pollution from coal and gas grows under the government scheme, potentially”.
“We would look at all those suggestions that are put on the table and we would consider them in good faith,” he said.
“From our perspective, what we’re saying is we’ve got to deal with this question of opening up new coal and gas mines because that’s not only untenable, and is going to put a safer climate out of reach, but it’s even going to make meeting … the government’s own targets more difficult.”
The Greens have introduced a bill for a climate trigger that would block developments that emit more than 100,000 tonnes of CO2 a year. Other models have been proposed that would require the environment minister to consider the climate impact of a proposal, but give them greater discretion over how it was dealt with.
Plibersek has said that companies will need to include emissions forecasts in development applications under her changes, but has not endorsed a trigger.
The climate change minister, Chris Bowen, and Bandt have committed to negotiating over the safeguard mechanism, which as proposed would put a new emissions intensity limit on 215 big polluting industrial sites and require most companies to make a 4.9% cut each year. The government is also negotiating with the independent senator David Pocock.
The safeguard mechanism was introduced by the Coalition in 2016. It was promised to put a limit on greenhouse gas emissions from about 200 major industrial facilities.
It applies to facilities that emit more than 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent a year. Each facility is set an emissions limit, known as a baseline.
The Coalition said companies that emitted above their baseline would have to buy carbon offsets or pay a penalty. In practice, facilities were allowed to change their baselines, few were penalised and industrial emissions continued to increase.
Labor plans to revamp the scheme.
It would set new baselines based on emissions intensity – how much a facility releases per unit of production. Baselines will be reduced by 4.9% a year.
Companies could choose whether to make onsite emissions cuts or buy Australian carbon credit units.
New polluting facilities, including gas and coalmines, could open and would be set baselines at “international best practice”.
Companies that emit less pollution than their baseline allows would be awarded a new type of “safeguard credit”. These within-scheme credits could be sold to other polluting facilities that emit more than their baseline and need offsets.
Labor wants the changes to start on 1 July 2023.
Critics of the scheme from a climate perspective have objected to the government allowing companies to open new fossil fuel projects and buy an unlimited number of carbon credits, created through contentious forest regeneration and other projects, to meet emissions limits. Industrial companies and lobby groups have supported the scheme in principal, but some have argued for special treatment.
The government was criticised at a senate inquiry this week for refusing to release its analysis forecasting how the scheme would operate, including the extent to which polluters would make onsite cuts and rely on offsets. Bowen said the analysis was “cabinet-in-confidence”.
Asked about other potential points of agreement with the government – including introducing a total cap on emissions from the scheme, imposing more onerous requirements on new entrants and waiting for a promised overhaul of the the carbon credit scheme to be fully implemented – Bandt said he “didn’t want to run those negotiations in public”.
“If we end up with a scheme where pollution from coal and gas goes down rather than up – as is the trajectory at the moment – then that broadly is where we want to get to because … what’s driving the problem is coal and gas. And so those ideas about having a cap, or what you do about new projects that come into the scheme, are obviously ways of addressing what might happen to coal and gas,” he said.
“The starting point is a question about whether the government agrees it wants pollution from coal and gas [to] go up or down.”
More than 100 scientists and policy experts, including Nobel laureate Prof Peter Doherty, former Australian of the year Prof Fiona Stanley and Climate Change Authority member Prof Lesley Hughes, this week signed an open letter calling on the government to not allow new fossil fuel projects as the world was “on the precipice of irreversible, catastrophic climate change”.
The government is proposing to change the safeguard through both legislation and regulation. The former will turn it into an emissions trading scheme, as also proposed by the previous Coalition government.
It wants the revamped scheme, which it says is central to meeting the national 2030 emissions target of a 43% cut compared with 2005 levels, to start on 1 July. The senate inquiry into the safeguard is due to report back on Monday.
