Climate Change
Our position on Climate Change
As Australia’s second largest energy provider we consider emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to be our most significant environmental challenge. Our aim is to grow our business in a less Greenhouse gas intensive manner and to achieve this, Origin has continued to play a leading role in suggesting strategies to address a carbon constrained future.
While investors are anticipating a carbon constrained future there is little appetite to invest without a suitable regulatory framework. A strong driver for more regulatory certainty in Australia is the need for investment to meet growing demand for electricity.
An important next step in climate change policy would be for Australian governments to formalise a policy whereby no indemnity against a future carbon exposure will be provided to any new power plant or energy intensive operation to be built in Australia. Such a policy would support investments in assets with long lives.
Origin supports policies that advocate early action and complement longer term efforts to develop and deploy breakthrough technologies. We also support the use of market-based incentives for private investment in lower greenhouse intensive technologies. In order to better understand the range of policy options and potential impacts on investment decisions, Origin has been involved in a range of external activities including the Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change