The NSW carbon market crash
Following the blog about how the carbon offset industry in the Australian state New South Wales has bloomed in recent months, a new report in the Sydney Morning Herald tells how one of the biggest eco-friendly companies - Easy Being Green, has gone out of business, laying off 150 employees and 100 contractors following the crash in the NSW Carbon Market.
The cause of the crash, they say, as well as an over supply of offset certificates and liberal reduction targets, is due to an irresponsible claim by the Federal Government saying that they will introduce a national market in 2012, scrapping the NSW state market - and while this claim was made, there was no transition scheme planned. This uncertainty has brought the price of certificates from $12 last month to $6.
Calls for the Iemma Government to intervene in the state carbon market and save the jobs of his staff and hundreds of others in environmental businesses had failed, Mr Gilding said. “The NSW Government informed Easy Being Green that it will not take any action to save its collapsing Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme and about 1000 jobs.”
…“Announcing that NSW’s successful Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme would be scrapped if a national scheme is introduced, without providing any of the detail, was extremely irresponsible,” Mr Koperberg told the Herald on Tuesday. “As a result, the usually stable NSW carbon market has been plagued by uncertainty.”