In another zig-zag on Australia’s climate and energy policy, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said he will establish a $760 million clean-energy innovation fund to invest in emerging technologies. Known as the Clean Energy Innovation Fund, the new program is a 180-degree pivot from the policies of Turnbull’s predecessor, Tony Abbott, who strongly supported Australia’s coal industry and derided efforts to set up a carbon-trading system.
Among developed economies, Australia is one of the most vulnerable to climate change, with the Great Barrier Reef suffering serious degradation, and wildfires that decimate the countryside. A pair of reports released earlier this month found that the cost of natural disasters in Australia is 50 percent higher than previous estimates and could rise to $25 billion a year by 2050, even without the likely effects of global warming.
Australia gets more than two-thirds of its electricity from coal power, and exports more than 330 million tons of coal a year, most of it to China. The Abbott government backed the coal industry to the hilt even as major coal-mining projects, such as the huge Carmichael mine, were delayed or canceled. An ambitious carbon tax and emissions trading scheme was canceled by Abbott in 2014.
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