AUSTRALIA will have to build about 35 new nuclear power plants - or resort to "creative accounting" - to meet the unrealistic targets set by Labor's emissions trading scheme, a US study has found.
The analysis, prepared by Roger Pielke jnr, professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, warns that it is impossible to predict how fast economies can "decarbonise" and urges governments to shift from setting unrealistic targets and timetables to measurable goals such as the development of clean technologies.
Professor Pielke, of the university's Centre for Science and Technology Policy Research, says Australia would have to become as carbon efficient by 2016 as Japan was in 2006 to meet the 25 per cent targets. It would have to reach this aim by 2018 for a 15 per cent reduction target or by 2020 to achieve a 5 per cent reduction target.
"To think that Australia could achieve Japanese levels of decarbonisation within the next decade strains credulity,'' the paper says.
Professor Pielke has examined climate change legislation in several nations, including Japan and Britain. His critique of the Australian legislation uses the same methodology as his analysis of Britain's Climate Act, published in the Institute of Physics journal Environmental Research Letters last year.
Professor Pielke said Australia's energy use was dominated by petroleum (32 per cent), natural gas (18 per cent) and coal (44 per cent).
To cut carbon dioxide emissions over the next decade as implied by the 5, 15 and 25 per cent 2020 targets would require that ''nearly all Australian coal consumption be replaced by a zero-carbon alternative'' such as nuclear or renewable.
The analyses showed that the level of effort needed to decarbonise Australia and meet the ETS targets is "herculean". This did not mean it could not be done, but focusing on impossible targets risked provoking public cynicism.
Australia's Climate Change Ministrer, Penny Wong, yesterday said the paper ignored ''the important role international permits will play in Australia's low cost transition to a low pollution future''. ''The government's policy includes using international permits as part of the market-based Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme…''
Paola Totaro