Ahead of last weekend’s election, RepuTex was commissioned by WWF-Australia to assess the environmental effectiveness of the two major political parties’ climate change policy platforms – the Coalition’s Direct Action Plan and the Labor Party’s Emissions Trading Scheme.
The full results of the report were released two weeks ago, finding that based on current policy and funding settings, the Coalition’s Direct Action Plan would lead to emissions growth of 16 per cent on 2000 levels by 2020, driven by higher power and industrial sector emissions. For the policy to meet Australia’s unconditional 5 per cent emissions reduction target, additional funding of $5.9 billion per year would be required – or an additional $35 billion in total.