THE authority established to administer the carbon tax has released its first list of companies that will pay a price for their emissions.
Among the likely suspects of large power companies and the like are a few surprises, including small gold producer Apex Gold.
The Clean Energy Regulator released a list of 248 companies, 45 of them in Western Australia, as the first instalment of its Liable Entities Public Information Database, a list of businesses liable to pay the carbon tax.
The list is mainly made up of power generators, petroleum and gas companies, mineral processing companies, manufacturing businesses and waste treatment facilities. It includes: bauxite and alumina processor Alcoa; Len Buckridge’s group BGC; brick maker Boral; Adelaide Brighton, which owns Cockburn Cement; and large resources companies Chevron and Woodside.
Also on the list are Apache Energy, Goldfields Power, Newgen Power Kwinana, Griffin Coal, Water Corporation, ATCO Power, multiple BHP Billiton entities, the cities of Armadale and Kalgoorlie Boulder, Iluka Resources, Newmont Yandal Operations, and Yara Pilbara Fertilisers.
The regulator originally contacted 330 entities it expected would be liable to the federal government’s carbon pricing mechanism – the carbon tax that will take effect on July 1 this year and later be replaced by an emissions trading scheme.
The regulator estimates that the 330 identified entities account for 95 per cent of emissions covered by the carbon tax; the 248 named entities in the LEPID account for close to 70 per cent of emissions covered by the carbon tax.
“This phase of the LEPID is our first step in providing timely information to participants in the new carbon pricing mechanism. Our primary focus is on providing education and training to help them understand and meet their statutory obligations,” Clean Energy Regulator chair Chloe Munro said.
As the regulator gathers information about changes in an entity’s circumstances, the LEPID will be altered and additional entities will be added to the database after more extensive consultation with landfill operators and transfers of liabilities as allowed in the Clean Energy Act 2011.
When the carbon tax takes effect it will be at a rate of $23 per tonne of carbon emissions; a floor price of $15/t will kick in when the emissions trading scheme is introduced in mid-2015, then increasing by 4 per cent each year until 2018.
At that time, the market will set the cost of permits to be traded between companies and will not be bound by a floor or ceiling price.
There has been firm opposition to the carbon tax since Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced her intention to introduce the tax in her first term in government.
Just last month the Minerals Council of Australia re-launched its Keep Mining Strong campaign against the carbon tax and the minerals resources rent tax.
When the carbon tax was passed through the Senate last November, MCA chief executive Mitch Hooke said the design of the tax and its modelling was deeply flawed.
“The government’s modelling on the impact of the carbon tax rests on the heroic assumption that there will be a global carbon price and international emissions trading in place by 2016,” Mr Hooke said.
“No-one except the Australian government believes this is likely to happen any time soon.”
Clive Palmer, Andrew Forrest and Gina Rinehart have been among the high-profile business people to oppose the carbon tax, while opposition leader Tony Abbott says he will scrap the tax if elected at the next federal poll.
