We know the climate is changing, so too are global investments in energy and low-carbon solutions. In an otherwise gloomy year for the global economy, last year saw another record in clean energy investments. These investments rose to $US260 billion with the US jostling China off the top podium for the first time since 2008.
More countries are putting in carbon prices and limits and global carbon markets grew in value 10% last year even with depressed EU prices.
Countries and companies are focusing on carbon and resource constraints for a variety of reasons but are forcing new understandings of competitiveness, which require new measurements.
Today, The Climate Institute and GE released the Low-Carbon Competitiveness Index, a measure of how the G20 countries are coping in a carbon-constrained world. The index is part of the first of what will now be an annual Global Climate Leadership Review also being launched today.
The index integrates nearly 20 indicators in three areas.
First, the sectoral composition of an economy and how weighted it is to carbon intensive activities, including the proportion of high technology exports and the amount of clean energy. Secondly, the early preparedness of an economy with measures on steps taken, including recent investment in clean energy and growth in emissions. Thirdly, recognising the future prosperity of an economy reach beyond recent technology investments and historical composition, measures of broader elements such as investment in education and the cost of business start-ups.
When this work was first done in 2009, Australia was 16th, the last among developed nations. Three years later, it is still stalled at the back of the pack and is the only developed nation not to have moved forward.
Indeed when we back-cast the data to 1995, Australia is the only country — developed or developing — to have gone backwards.
What this means for us is that our high-carbon economy is becoming a high risk for our future prosperity. What we have seen as the economic blessings of the past — highly polluting cheap energy and abundant mineral resources — will shortly become the economic curses of our future.
It is clear that the countries that are best prepared for the low-carbon economy are those who have recognised the inextricable link between economic, resource security and climate change policies and are taking action accordingly.
France, Germany and closer to home, South Korea and China, are outpacing Australia in their economic transformation and ability to compete in a carbon constrained world. These countries have all invested in low-carbon solutions or have policies encouraging them. Each are active, or about to be active, in pricing and/or limiting carbon emissions trading.
What explains Australia’s standing?
Relative to other G20 countries, we have the lowest level of overall clean energy production, the second highest number of cars per capita, and relatively high deforestation and emissions per capita from the transport sector. Lower-than-average investments in infrastructure and declining expenditure on education also affect our ranking in the Low-Carbon Competitiveness Index.
The Clean Energy Future legislation, which puts a price and a limit on carbon from the first of July this year, is an important step forward in ensuring that Australia is not left behind in the emerging low-carbon global economy. Just as in other countries with carbon prices, other policies in energy efficiency, transport and clean energy will also be needed.
The race to a global low carbon economy has begun — far too slowly — but it is under way. Australia has started this race not only facing but walking backwards.
Not in every statistic that you might count:
Blithely ignoring the ‘elephant in the room’ that is growing population will not help, either. Australia leads in this area, unlike the above.
John, after pointing out that other nations have invested heavily in low carbon energy sources, while Australia hasn’t, you then draw the conclusion that a carbon tax will help us to catch up? I would call that a massive leap in logic. Most likley outcome of the carbon tax is for companies to avoid it by importing even more from overseas.
Unfortunately for the planet, there was no opportunity for Julia to roll over and “hawk the fork” for population control, but there was the opportunity to roll over for Bob Brown with a carbon tax, so the elephant in the room is ignored in favour of greasing up up to the Greens.
Whilst in the long run this will make the situation worse for Australian producers, in the short term it gave Gillard and her cronies another three years access to the parliamentary pig trough, aided and abetted by the “Three Amigos”, the hapless Wilkie and the apparently disingenuous Mr Thomson whose s value to the government ensures that Fair Work Australia will probably never complete the enquiry into his alleged misdemeanours.
The “Inconvenient Truth”(apologies to Al Gore) is that the carbon tax will cost Australian jobs while the coal we are exporting is burned in India and China so that they can export back to Australia the finished product, provided we can pay for it by exporting more coal, gas and of course iron ore . The net effect is zero effect on emissions, other than the the effect of demand elasticity on Australian consumption of fossil fueled products, effectively a zero sum game for the planet but tens of thousands of Australians out of work and millions facing higher energy costs to enable the government to fund more political promises. Good one Juliar!
@Whistleblower: It’s unlikely the tax will make a difference, either way. That is to say, it won’t affect the economy, nor will it help with carbon. It’ll almost certainly help with Labor getting economy into surplus, though, and isn’t that what really matters? While I’m wearing my Cassandra hat, I don’t think the Coalition will repeal it, rationalising with the excuse that they don’t have the numbers, but really because they will like having the extra revenue.
(and you missed spelling Julia as Juliar once, are you slipping, or what?)
@Meski
Sorry for my slip with Julia(r), I’m probably slipping into my dotage.
I think the rest of my comment was OK, but the absence of of commentary from left-wing trolls leaves me somewhat perplexed. Was there a Greens’ or ex-communists “love in” yesterday?