Australia: Massive CO2 fiasco looming

The emissions reporting framework is causing angst in corporate corridors | theage.com.au

Companies caught in the reporting dragnet must develop systems that enable them to report their carbon footprint to a new federal agency, the Greenhouse Emissions Data Office, on the basis of their direct energy emissions, and indirect emissions through energy consumption.
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The survey indicated, however, that most Australian companies had entered the ramp-up to the carbon trading system without having the knowledge they needed to cope with it, or even a plan to acquire that knowledge.

This partly reflects the fact that the Rudd Government has accelerated the introduction of carbon trading by two years to 2010, but it probably also reflects widely held but rarely voiced scepticism inside Australian boardrooms about the full-blown global warming catastrophe scenario.

Of course, what directors think is now to a large extent irrelevant: Australia's regulatory response to global warming is in train, and compulsory emissions reporting will not only usher in carbon trading, but continue to expand after trading begins in 2010.

Companies that make up probably more than 90% of the Australian sharemarket will eventually be publicly filing emissions information to avoid fines of up to $100,000 and public censure, and that information will be incorporated into the data that investors dissect to put a market value on them.