The emerging reality of the emerging “carbon economy” irrespective of the regulatory regime that emerges is not only an operational and regulatory management issue, but a strategic one because of its potential to create and destroy asset value.
Over time, emissions intensive assets will be replaced by those that create the same outcome without the emissions, and new businesses will emerge that provide the technical tools.
This is not an ideological view, it is based on 250 years of commercial history. The same way the internal combustion engine replaced the hay driven horse transport, the telephone finished off the telegraph, the silicon chip finished off vacuum tubes, and the net is in the process of finishing off the CD, renewable/low emissions energy source will finish off coal fired power stations.
As Australia’s politicians, today, start again the wrangling, point scoring, verbal gymnastics, hubris, personal views paraded as facts, dissembling, and plain untruths in the debate about the regulatory framework to be built in this country to supposedly “manage” climate change, they would do well to leaven the mix with some commercial and strategic reality.
