Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme
| Proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme | |
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| A proposed act to introduce a Cap-and-Trade emissions trading scheme to Australia, aimed at being the main element of Australia's climate policy |
The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (or CPRS) was a cap-and-trade emissions trading scheme for anthropogenic greenhouse gases proposed by the Rudd government, as part of its climate change policy, which had been due to commence in Australia in 2010. It marked a major change in the energy policy of Australia. The policy began to be formulated in April 2007, when the federal Labor Party was in Opposition and the six Labor-controlled states commissioned an independent review on energy policy, the Garnaut Climate Change Review, which published a number of reports. After Labor won the 2007 federal election and formed government, it published a Green Paper on climate change for discussion and comment. The Federal Treasury then modelled some of the financial and economic impacts of the proposed CPRS scheme.
The Rudd government published a final White Paper on 15 December 2008, and announced that legislation was intended to take effect in July 2010; but the legislation for the CPRS (aka ETS) failed to gain the numbers in the Senate and was twice rejected creating a double dissolution election trigger. A bitter political debate within the Coalition Opposition saw Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull lose the leadership to the anti-CPRS Tony Abbott. The Rudd government did not call an election and in April 2010, Rudd deferred plans for the CPRS.
After the 2010 federal election, the Gillard Government was able to get the Carbon Pricing Mechanism (CPM) passed into law as part of the Clean Energy Futures Package (CEF) in 2011, and became effective on 1 July 2012. However, after the 2013 federal election there was a change in government, and the Abbott Government repealed the CEF package on 17 July 2014. Due to the great deal of policy uncertainty surrounding the scheme, organizations in Australia responded in a rather informal and tepid manner and largely withheld from making any large-scale investments in emissions reductions technology during the scheme's operation.
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