Funding Australia’s move to renewable energies

Sooner or later GRIs have to be spent on investing in greenhouse abatement measures so it does not matter that they can be treated like a currency but without any interest for saving them.

The system means that consumers who did not want to bother with investing in renewables could get up to 100 per cent value from the GRIs that they had to purchase.

Won’t it cost too much?

Modern technology means that the cost of administering the system will be low. It can be expected that the total cost will be less than 0.5 per cent turnover.

Immediate and acceptable

This approach is likely to be politically acceptable and will achieve the desired result - a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions at the same time as funding a renewable energy infrastructure. It can be implemented immediately. It will not have dire economic consequences and in fact is likely to bolster market activity, as the money from GRIs will be invested locally and will lead to technologies that can be sold to other countries.

The system can be easily tuned by changing the size of GRIs charged for each ton of greenhouse gas emitted. The figures we have used are likely to add an average 30 per cent to the cost of all energy that produces greenhouse gases as a byproduct.

Investment in replacement technologies will be market driven not ideologically driven as people will tend to invest in the technologies that give the best economic return.

The direct economic effect will be the difference in the economic value of greenhouse abatement technologies versus investment in other areas. This will be substantial but given the assumption that we have no choice, it is something we have to do.