No carbon tax now means a tax on future generation

Canberra Times
1 March 2011, Page: 10

I have had a gutful of the unsubstantiated whinging by the Coalition, the Chamber of Commerce and the rest of the flat earth, climate contrarian no hopers getting so much attention in the media.

How does $26 a tonne for carbon convert into $300 on a household's electricity bill, as asserted by Greg Hunt on Lateline on Friday night? A typical coal fired plant produces one tonne of CO₂ to produce 1 MW of electricity. That's 2.6¢ per kW. A brown coal plant might produce 20% more CO₂, bringing the cost up to 3¢ per kW.

And that assumes all our power comes from dirty coal. I encourage all your readers to pull out their electricity bills and work out what the true cost on their power bill will be. My household uses less than 15 kW per day so the levy comes to a whopping 39¢ per day or $142 per year. Even assuming the average Australian house uses 20 kW per day gives just 52¢ per day. Neither of these figures comes close to the $300 so prominently spouted by the fear mongers.

And instead of whinging about renewable energy raising electricity bills, when will people like Barnaby Joyce concede that it is mainly the rapid adoption of air conditioning over the past decade that has required the construction of new infrastructure to satisfy the added electrical demand? The inflation I feel in my electricity bill has more to do with runaway demand from people installing air conditioning than grid connected solar arrays.

And the argument that Australia shouldn't go first in adopting a carbon tax is absurd. Canada, Denmark, Britain, Germany and others have had formal carbon pricing for many years and the most recent economic evaluation of the impact is that there isn't any or maybe a slight improvement in global competitiveness in the case of Denmark. Australia can't go first we have already missed the starting gun.

Brad Sherman, Duffy