Isra-Mart srl : Expert joins calls for carbon price detail

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The federal government should outline emissions reduction targets soon to give the business community certainty, a legal expert says.

Environmental lawyer turned academic Dr Nicola Durrant says Prime Minister Julia Gillard needs to learn from the government's failed attempt to introduce an emissions trading scheme (ETS).

The failure to outline emissions reduction targets in legislation and the failure to detail a timeframe to achieve those reductions were major flaws in the ETS, Dr Durrant says.

"Until the government announces the short-term and long-term emission reduction goals, it's very difficult for the business community to plan to change their current practices," Dr Durrant told AAP.

The government's carbon price scheme will be rolled out from July 2012.

Ms Gillard announced last month a carbon price would be fixed for a period of three to five years before a move to a cap-and-trade system, but no details of the price and reduction targets have been released.

Dr Durrant said the new scheme repeated some of the flaws of the ETS.

"A carbon trading scheme needs to send a price signal to the community - a cost on carbon that will encourage people to change their behaviour," she said.

"What's worrying about the current and previous proposal is this idea of giving free permits to firms and businesses and so on.

"If there's a zero dollar attached to the release of carbon then it will undermine the whole idea of putting a price on carbon."

Don Voelte, chief executive of LNG company Woodside Petroleum, has called for the liquefied natural gas industry to be excluded from the carbon-price scheme, partly because gas has lower greenhouse gas emissions than coal.

Exemptions and loopholes could severely undermine the ultimate goal of reducing carbon emissions, Dr Durrant said.

Dr Durrant, previously a solicitor in a top-tier Sydney law firm, is currently a lecturer at Queensland University of Technology's law faculty.

She has been researching carbon-pricing schemes and the legal framework since 2005 for her PhD.

Her book, Legal Responses to Climate Change, which analyses climate change laws in Australia and overseas, was released on Tuesday.