This story started as I was writing an article on Monday for my paper about the carbon tax. The Government had released a vast amount of information on Sunday about their new proposal. I interviewed the local gas companies, Santos and Origin, a few weeks prior and was keen to write about the coal seam gas industry impact of the tax and local implications. In her speech on Sunday, Prime Minister Julia Gillard said 500 big companies would pay for every tonne of carbon they produce. Climate change minister Greg Combet confirmed it in one of his releases. I assumed the gas majors to would be on the list.
Annabel Crabb found more precise information when she turned her attention to the problem yesterday. Crabb wondered who was in the Misfortune 500 and said the biggest companies may not be the biggest emitters of carbon. “Can we get a list?,” she asked. “No – you can’t” said the Government. The 500 companies are not an identified list but an estimate of how many companies in Australia would be caught by the scheme’s eligibility rules.
I eventually found the Government page that talks about the 500 companies. “Most are companies operating large facilities (with over 25,000 tonnes annual CO2-e emissions) that directly emit greenhouse gases, such as power stations, mines and heavy industry,” the site said. “Some are public authorities responsible for emissions from landfills.” A fact sheet gave a breakdown of where the companies were. NSW and Queensland had half the companies, 100 were involved in coal, 60 each in electricity and heavy industry, 50 in other fossil fuel and 40 in natural gas. I assumed the latter category covers my local companies, but could not confirm this as there were no company names in the fact sheet.
For political reasons, petrol and agriculture are exempt and Crabb explained other problems with the eligibility rules. “A company with 20 facilities each emitting 24,000 tonnes of CO2 a year would not be liable, while some poor boob with one factory emitting 26,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide and 19 clean green beansprout-fired tofu smelters would still have to cough up.”
Crabb also found the compulsory reporting done under the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007. The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting on “Greenhouse and Energy Information 2009-2010” has a list of 300 companies that emit more than the 2009-10 annual threshold of 87,500 tonnes a year. It does not break the data down by facility but it is difficult to see how companies like Macquarie Generation (23.4 million tonnes), Delta Electricity (20.45m), CS Energy (16.8m), TRUenergy (15.6m), Blue Scope Steel (10.8m), Woodside Petroleum (8.4m), Alinta (7.8m), and Alcoa (6.75m) can avoid paying the tax. There were only 300 companies in this list, so 200 others need to be added.
Both of the CSG companies were on the list, Santos at 3.57m and Origin at 1.87m. So as I suspected all along – they will both likely be in the 500. At $23 a tonne I estimate Santos will have to pay $85m a year and Origin $43m. Macquarie Generation (getting their message out through the sympathetic Australian) are up for $538 billion. Despite what the Government said, it should not have been that hard to find out. Watch out too for fiddling along the edges as companies try to make the most of that “facilities” loophole.