Australia Needs ‘Strong’ Carbon Targets, Lobby Groups Tell Rudd

By Angela Macdonald-Smith

Dec. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Australia needs to announce a 2020 carbon emissions reduction target of at least 25 percent to 40 percent to pave the way for a “strong” global agreement, lobby groups said in a letter to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

An announcement by Climate Change Minister Penny Wong of a reduction target of between 5 percent and 15 percent from 2000 levels, as is being speculated, would represent “a profound failure,” the 54 organizations said in the open letter, a copy of which was e-mailed to Bloomberg News.

Australia will release its 2020 targets for carbon emissions on Dec. 15 at the same time as a document detailing the final design of the planned emissions trading system, Wong said last week. The government will take into account international developments, including the Copenhagen climate change negotiations next December, in setting the final targets, she said.

“If Australia announces a target of anything less than 25 to 40 percent, it will send a negative signal to the world in the lead-up to the crucial Copenhagen negotiations in December 2009 and will make a strong global agreement much more difficult to reach,” the organizations said in the letter, dated Dec. 4.

World Wide Fund for Nature, Greenpeace Australia Pacific and Australian Conservation Foundation are among the letter’s authors.

Australian ‘Ambition’

The target range for emissions cuts announced by Wong is likely to be “wide” and subsequently narrowed as it becomes clearer how global negotiations develop, Citigroup Inc. said.

“We do not expect Australia to impose stringent domestic targets in isolation,” Citigroup’s Sydney-based analyst Elaine Prior said in a Dec. 1 report. “The announcement may include a challenging Australian ‘ambition,’ contingent on international progress,” she said.

The planned July 2010 start date for Australia’s carbon trading system seems “ambitious,” while a later start, for example in 2012, could allow more stringent targets to be imposed from the outset, assuming international progress is made, Citigroup said.

Woodside Petroleum Ltd., Xstrata Plc and Chevron Corp. are among companies that oppose some aspects of the proposed emissions-trading system.

To contact the reporter on this story: Angela Macdonald-Smith in Sydney at amacdonaldsm@bloomberg.net