It’s taken a while, but Labor has finally realised the significant environmental benefits of the Turnbull Government’s Emissions Reduction Fund.
The Emissions Reduction Fund is the centrepiece of the Government’s suite of policies to tackle climate change.
The Queensland Labor Government has formed an alliance with GreenCollar to take advantage of the Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) for Queensland projects that will help tackle climate change and protect the Great Barrier Reef.
Labor Minister Steven Miles today said it’s:
“a great opportunity to maximize the potential environmental benefits of ERF projects”
“not only is it a way to sequester carbon in vegetation and soils but we can also meet other environmental objectives at the same time, in areas like biodiversity conservation, water quality, land stabilisation and integrating sustainable agriculture practices across project sites to ensure resilience and productivity.”
And Queensland Labor is right – ERF projects have significant environmental benefits.
Through the ERF, 275 projects have been contracted resulting in 92.8 million tonnes of abatement, including 51.3 million tonnes from vegetation projects, 20.4 million tonnes in the waste sector, 8.3 million tonnes from agriculture and 7.1 million tonnes in savanna burning projects.
While Bill Shorten and Mark Butler continue with the fallacy that the ERF is about “paying big polluters”, Queensland Labor knows what the ERF is really about.
It’s about providing positive incentives to drive change that will cut emissions, tackle climate change and improve our environment.
It was Labor who paid $5.5 billion to coal power generators – the big polluters – for absolutely nothing in return.
(ENDS)