Brisbane

I had three meetings today. The first was with Matthew Skoien, Senior Director in the Queensland Office of Climate Change. We spoke about the federal CPRS scheme, including the changes that were announced yesterday which delayed the beginning of the scheme as well as changed some compensation for affected industries. Matthew was involved with the design of the Federal system as well as helping design schemes for Queensland that will fill in the gaps that the CPRS does not cover. Queensland is the largest per capita emitter of carbon in Australia and is one of the largest in the world. They have large agriculture interests which are not covered by the CPRS and have large generation and mining facilities. Matthew is currently working on a plan that will address some of the shortfalls as well as implement complimentary schemes to fill the gaps.
My second meeting was a lunch hosted by Sir Leo Hielscher. Sir Leo is the Chairman of the Queensland Treasury Corporation (QTC). He was an Eisenhower Fellow in 1973 and has remained very active. We had an outstanding lunch with about 10 people from government, industry and from the QTC. Most of the discussion was around the US’s potential implementation of cap and trade as well as financing difficulties associated with the global financial crises. Ben Hankamer, a 2009 Eisenhower Fellow also attended.
My third meeting was with Dr. John Cole who is the Chief Officer of the Queensland Office of Clean Energy. Dr. Cole is responsible for planning and implementing renewable energy targets. We spoke about the resources available in Queensland including geothermal, solar and wind. We also discussed some of the barriers to full scale development. The most important of these barriers are increased cost due to the need for transmission infrastructure.