Australia’s is being damaged by the Howard Government’s greenhouse policy
vacuum – and that’s according to the energy industry, not some mob of
troglodyte tree huggers.

Yesterday I chaired the UBS utilities conference
under a no-names, no-quotes agreement – although I notice The Smage‘s Jamie Freed
somehow found out AGL dropped a line about the cost of the PNG gas pipeline blowing
out.

Without mentioning names or quoting anyone
then, I can still report a constant subtext of the proceedings was the problem
of our carbon non-policy. It has placed
billions of dollars of capital investment on hold while chasing Australian
money overseas.

It is taken for granted that, at some stage, Australia
will join the rest of the world in implementing a genuine greenhouse policy.
Until then, it’s very hard for the private sector to make large-scale
investments in power generation. At the same time, investment in alternative
energy is being chased overseas.

The biggest surprise, though, came from an
unscientific but nonetheless telling vote on the question: Should Australia
have a carbon tax? That room full of analysts, funds managers and utilities
executives voted 80% “yes”.