What will the “Climate Trigger” bill mean for you?

Much has been discussed about the Greens’ “Climate Trigger” amendment, currently before the Senate, but what does it actually entail and what could it mean for the way you do business? 

On the 5th of September 2022, the Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young tabled the “Climate Trigger” legislative amendment to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act in the Senate. 

The amendments are two-fold, with the second seemingly being missed by the media:

·       Add climate change as a “matter of national environmental significance”, and

·       Require the Climate Change Authority to develop and maintain a national carbon budget to 2050.

Firstly, what is the EPBC Act?

The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act requires the Federal Government to assess and approve new projects on “matters of national environmental significance”.

Currently, there are only nine matters that trigger the assessment and approval scheme:

·       World heritage properties

·       National heritage places

·       Wetlands of international importance

·       Nationally threatened species and ecological communities

·       Listed migratory species

·       Protection of the environment from nuclear actions

·       Commonwealth marine areas

·       The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park

·       Water resources

The Climate Trigger amendment will add “Significant Impact on Emissions” as a matter.

What is considered a “Significant Impact on Emissions”?
The amendment sets a trigger for new emissions projects with two classes requiring the Minister for the Environment to take different actions:

·       A Significant Emissions class for projects that would emit 25,000 to 100,000 tonnes of scope 1 emissions in any one year, including land clearing and emissions generated during the preconstruction stage.

·       A Prohibited Impact on emissions class for projects that emit above 100,000 tonnes of scope 1 in any one year, including land clearing and emissions generated during the preconstruction stage.

Significant Emissions class projects will need to be reviewed by the Minister for the Environment, who must consider the project through Part 9 of the Act, as the Minister does with other matters of national environmental significance.  The Minister will need to consider if the project is consistent with the remaining national carbon budget left until Australia meets zero emissions.

For Prohibited Emissions, the Minister will be obliged to reject the application similar to nuclear projects under the Act.

How will the Minister determine if the project works with the remaining carbon budget?

In addition to these triggers, the amendment also requires the Climate Change Authority to develop a national carbon budget to 2050, updated annually so everyone is aware of how much scope Australia has left to burn fossil fuels.  This is for the period 1 Jan 2023 to 31 December 2050, expressed as a gross amount of carbon dioxide equivalence.

How likely is this to pass into law?

With the Greens holding the numbers to block bills in the Senate, they are in a good position to negotiate with the Government to ensure some or all the amendments are passed. 

During the tabling of the bill to parliament, Sarah Hanson-Young of the Greens quoted Prime Minster Albanese, who tabled a Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change (Climate Change Trigger) bill in 2005 as a Shadow Environment Minister: “We cannot any longer afford to be complacent on this issue. We need action and one of the actions that we need, which has been acknowledged for many years, is this amendment to the EPBC Act. We urge the government to support this private member's bill.”

Obviously, the factors taken into consideration when pushing for change are different for a Shadow Minister to those of the Prime Minster of the country.  However, this shows that Prime Minister Albanese has acknowledged the need to limit or prevent high emission producing projects in order to stay within Australia’s carbon budget.

If it passes, what will this mean for your business?

Most businesses who are heavy emitters will already be reporting their emissions via the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting (NGER) Scheme.  However, if this amendment passes it will add an additional layer of red tape to the approval of new projects, if not red light them altogether. 

With the inclusion of land clearing and preconstruction stage emissions to the calculation, the bar may be lowered to include projects that would have previously avoided regulation.

Even if your project is approved, the amendments require that the projects be approved based on the condition of the emissions generated meeting those estimated in the project approval submission, and that approval may be revoked if those conditions are breached.  This means ongoing carbon emission reporting will be required for the life of that project.

For business who are not heavy emitters and who are not looking to start new projects that will generate emissions, there will still be an affect, and this is what the media seemed to have glossed over.

In order to calculate and maintain a national carbon budget, the Climate Change Authority will need to gather a huge amount of emissions data from most organisations.  Questions remain about which organisations that would include, and whether the budget would take Scope 1, 2 and/or 3 emissions into consideration. 

However they choose to do this, and regardless if this amendment passes unchanged, if at all, the future is clear:  Emissions data capture and reporting will be increasingly required to conduct business in Australia, if not throughout the world.

Conifr Technologies has developed a solution to ease the process of capturing your emissions data, provide you the tools to see where your emissions reduction activities will be best focussed and extract the information required to quickly and easily report on them.

Contact us today to see how we can help your business.

Photo by Aditya Joshi on Unsplash