Australia’s Clean Energy Act : A New Measure in the Global Carbon Market

The compromise reached at Durban on December 11, 2011 ("Durban Compromise") on a climate action roadmap committed states to negotiating a legal agreement by 2015, which would prospectively come into force in 2020. It represents a limited success on the international stage. The agreement will oblige major greenhouse gas emitters such as China, India and the USA to agree to legally binding greenhouse gas emission targets in the future via a new protocol, another legal instrument, or an agreed outcome with legal force. In the interim, the Kyoto commitments will be extended for at least another five years. Notwithstanding this apparent success, there are inevitable doubts and uncertainties about the nature and scope of any future agreement. This reality should not, however, diminish the responsibility of individual states to develop and then link their carbon schemes to achieve desired environmental outcomes pending a concerted international effort. Ideological cleavages, narrowly construed interpretations of the national interest, and the usual political maneuvering between states have acted to impede a binding global bargain on numerous occasions. However, key regional and national players have largely kept the momentum for climate action going through domestic (or regional) action and limited transboundary linkages. Europe has led the way. Others have followed. The Durban Compromise, if successful, will likely bring all major emitters into a global network of carbon mitigation schemes. It will be instructive to assess how states at the forefront of climate action are situating themselves on the path to carbon reduction. States and interest groups have lessons to learn and pitfalls to avoid as they embark on the task of formulating and implementing carbon reduction schemes which seek to balance the needs of the community, business and the environment.

© 2013 The Loyola University Chicago International Law Review