Greenhouse emissions from Australian companies paying the carbon tax have fallen by 7% over the past year “in large part” due to the carbon price impost, the Investor Group on Climate Change has said.



Calculations by the group of official data from the Clean Energy Regulator shows carbon emissions from Australia’s 350 largest corporate emitters – who are directly liable to pay the tax – fell from 342m tonnes in 2011-12 to 321m tonnes in 2012-13.

The group’s chief executive, Nathan Fabian, said he believed the carbon tax was “the major contributor” to the decrease in emissions, although other factors did play a role, including the shutdown of some large electricity generators because of weather events and the closure of some major manufacturing operations.

Appearing before a Senate committee investigating the Coalition’s Direct Action climate change plan, Fabian said the policy was not “investment grade” and investors were moving to Europe, the US and some South American countries to find “low-carbon opportunities”.

Fabian’s group represents institutional and other investors interested in the impact of climate change on investments.

He said his members were concerned that Direct Action was essentially “a short-term grants based scheme” and he believed the proposed emissions reduction fund would not provide sufficient incentives for investors and business to participate.

“We think banks will take a similar view,” he told a Senate committee inquiry into the Direct Action scheme.

“My members are looking at the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, France and some South American countries as having more stable investment environments for low-carbon opportunities,” he said.

He said the government’s policy to abolish the carbon price and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), and its intention to review the renewable energy target as well as uncertainty over funding for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency “appears to be a very clear signal that Australia is not the market for low-carbon investing”.

The so-called “green bank”, the CEFC, which is tasked with encouraging low-carbon investment in Australia and which the government is seeking to abolish, also appeared before the inquiry.

A Nationals senator, John Williams, challenged the CEFC to explain why it had refinanced the Macarthur windfarm in July 2013 at a time when the project was already operating.

The CEFC chief executive, Oliver Yates, said refinancing was an important part of the CEFC role because it meant capital was turned over and it helped bring new investors into clean technology projects in Australia.

The CEFC chair, Jillian Broadbent, said the organisation, which has access to $10bn over five years to lend at commercial rates, would return money to the budget by 2014-15 and could actually help Direct Action by assisting with finance for investors trying to access the new emissions reduction fund, if it was not abolished.

During separate evidence by the independent Climate Change Authority (CCA) – which the Coalition is also seeking to abolish – Williams said he was angry because the cost of the carbon price fell “back on the man on the land and his wife”.

“Even if Australia’s emissions went to zero, even if we stopped breathing, which is what we’d have to do, China’s emissions would still go up. This is why I am so angry about the current program,” Williams said.

The CCA’s chief executive, Anthea Harris, said Australia’s carbon price was not the highest in the world, and it was wrong to conflate the total value of the tax with the cost to the economy. The authority’s chair, Bernie Fraser, said no emission reduction scheme was “costless” and carbon pricing was the most cost-effective policy mechanism available.