Yale professor calls for carbon market

Age
Tuesday 3/4/2007 Page: 2

THE president of Yale University says Australia is in danger of becoming a backwater if its government and leading institutions do not adequately respond to climate change. Richard Levin, who is in Australia to meet with the International Alliance of Research Universities, called on Australia to show leadership on emissions trading or risk being left behind.

Professor Levin, who has been president of Yale since 1993, said it was the responsibility of developed nations, such as Australia and the US, to take the lead in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and help establish a market that would set a price on carbon.

"I certainly do think they need to step up," he said. `A global emissions trading systems is what we ultimately need. .. It is going to be hard to get Australia and the US in the boat, even harder to get some of the developing countries on board. "You really do need a cap, and that would set an accurate price on the cost of carbon.

"You need taxation for the retail users, you need to have high taxes, that is the only way you are going to reduce consumption." The International Alliance of Research Universities, which includes Cambridge, Oxford and the Australian National University, met in Canberra last week to discuss issues including the higher education sector's response to climate change.

Professor Levin said Yale had committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to about 150,000 tonnes by 2020, a 43 per cent decrease from 2005. He said it would cost almost $US10 million ($A12.3 million) a year towards the end of that period to achieve the goal.

Some Victorian universities said they had already set targets. Monash University's vicechancellor's group has pledged to reduce carbon emissions by 20 per cent on 2005 figures by 2010 while its Clayton campus uses 13 per cent green energy. The University of Melbourne said it believed it was the first institution to buy green energy five years ago, and was reviewing an audit of its Parkville campus.

Professor Levin's comments come as Australian companies such as Global Renewables look towards Europe for business growth. Casey Cahill, a spokesman for GRD Limited, parent company of Global Renewables, rejected suggestions the company was planning to quit Australia after winning a $5 billion recycling contract in Britain.

Renewable Energy Generators Australia chief executive Susan Jeanes, a former Howard Government MP, warned that jobs and money would continue to be lost overseas until the Government levelled the playing field.

"There are more jobs in providing a megawatt hour of renewable energy than fossil fuel energy, because they're hightech specialist jobs. "But the only way we'll get the investment in those jobs and in renewable energy is with a nationally consistent energy policy, which clearly we don't have," said Ms Jeanes.

Link: www.yale.edu