PLEA Network

19 March 2019, The Guardian, Labor signals it won’t use Kyoto credits in final emissions policy. The shadow climate change minister, Mark Butler, has given a strong hint at a candidates’ forum in a key Victorian marginal seat that Labor won’t use carry-over credits from the Kyoto period in its final emissions policy. According to an attendee at the forum held in the electorate of Corangamite on Monday, Butler told the gathering he was not personally keen to use carry-overs if Labor won the coming federal election. Carry-over credits are an accounting system that allows countries to count credits from exceeding their targets under the soon-to-be-obsolete Kyoto protocol periods against their Paris emissions reduction commitments for 2030. Marian Smedley, a Greens candidate in last year’s Victorian election, told Guardian Australia Butler told the forum Labor was still taking submissions on carry-overs but he was not keen to use “dodgy accounting”. Smedley said Butler told the event it “might not even be legal” to use carry-over credits. Butler disputes he used that phrase. He told Guardian Australia he did not use the word legal. He said he told Monday’s gathering it still wasn’t clear how the Paris rule book would treat carry-over credits from Kyoto. Read more here