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Empresas y finanzas

Australia to delay carbon-emissions scheme: media


    CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia will delay the start of its planned carbon-emissions trading scheme by a year to mid-2011, local media said on Monday, as industry opposition to the scheme intensifies and the nation slips into recession.

    But the state broadcaster ABC said the government would also increase its interim 2020 emissions-reduction target, currently for a cut of 5-15 percent based on 2000 levels. The report did not give a proposed new target.

    Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who has been under pressure from industry and opposition politicians to water down or even ditch the scheme, declined immediate comment on the reports.

    Major emissions industries, from aluminum-smelters to airlines, had complained about the planned July 1, 2010 start of the scheme next year, saying it would hamper economic recovery and destroy jobs at a time when unemployment was rising fast.

    The center-left government, which came to government in 2007 promising to reduce greenhouse gases, is due to hold a news conference later on Monday, ABC and Sky TV said.

    A slower start but tougher reduction target might help the government push the carbon-trading laws through an obstructive upper house of parliament dominated by conservative opponents, five Green senators and two swing-vote independents.

    Conservatives have been calling for the scheme to be delayed and the influential Greens want tougher interim targets.

    "The Australian Greens today wrote to the prime minister and climate change minister making a good-faith offer to break the political impasse and support the (carbon-trading) legislation if satisfactory amendments are made to make it environmentally effective," the Greens said in a statement.

    The Greens want Australia to make an unconditional emissions cut of 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, with a commitment to move to a 40 percent cut if world climate talks in Copenhagen in December forge a new global climate pact.

    "Protecting the climate is a job for everyone, and putting a price on toxic carbon is one useful part of the effort to deliver those jobs as Australia moves rapidly toward carbon neutrality," said Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown.

    ($1=1.357 Australian Dollars)

    (Reporting by Rob Taylor; Editing by Mark Bendeich)