Age
Saturday 29/11/2008 Page: 6
AUSTRALIA must implement a long-term energy strategy or risk dire environmental and economic consequences, Alcoa chairman Alan Cransberg has warned. Mr Cransberg yesterday called for a national security strategy to guarantee the nation's energy requirements for the next 50 to 100 years. "Energy security is absolutely critical in the issue of climate change and our capacity to meet the greenhouse challenge," he told yesterday's meeting of the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia.
"For too long we have been focused on expanding and maximising energy exports, without proper protection for our own future generations." Long-term energy contracts of more than 20 years were to the detriment of Australia's energy needs, Mr Cransberg said, because it meant the energy was no longer available for the local economy. "Those foreign-contract prices have been regularly spiralling upward with telling consequences for local users."
Securing sufficient energy stores was a key national security consideration, he said, because of the growing dependence on "supplies from politically unstable regions" and the growing demand for oil and gas. The chairman also emphasised that his company supported cutting greenhouse emissions but only if it did not adversely affect people's social and economic needs. "Any scheme must pass the basic test of firstly reducing global emissions and government must balance reduced emissions against social and economic consequences.
Climate-change regulation is pivotal to the energy challenges that now confront industry," Mr Cransberg said. But, he said, the Federal Government roust realise that penalising Australian companies through over-regulation of the carbon pollution reduction scheme would compound the world's economic decline and have a negative impact on reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions.
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