Australia will take a long-term emissions reduction strategy to a global summit on climate change later this year.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Flagging his approach to the Glasgow COP26 summit, Energy Minister Angus Taylor will tell a business forum in Sydney on Friday the strategy will be based on using technology to cut emissions.
"A target without a plan is meaningless - it is the worst part of the emissions reduction debate," he will tell the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia.
"The world must go through a rapid technology development and adoption phase to ensure that we can reduce emissions on a global scale, and Australia is well placed to take advantage of this."
Leading up to the climate summit, work will be done on how best to boost investment in low-emissions energy generation, and make geological and biological sequestration cheaper.
Mr Taylor says one of his parameters will be to deliver the shift over coming decades "without massive government subsidies".
The cornerstone of the strategy will be a "technology investment roadmap" which the minister says will give the public and private sector guidance on the government's priorities for energy and emissions-reduction technologies.
To date, federal funds totalling more than $10.4 billion have been invested in more than 670 clean technology projects with a value of $35 billion, mostly focused on wind and solar.
"We must move our investments to the next challenges - hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, lithium, and advanced livestock feed supplements, to name a few."
The government would target its support to ensure each technology reached economic parity or better, that is, the shift to lower emissions comes at zero cost or low cost.
In addition, the government would seek a "four or five times multiplier" effect - for every dollar from taxpayers, the private sector would invest four or five dollars over the course of a project.
"We will outline the technologies, we will outline the goals for each of these technologies, and then we will show the results from the scenarios," the minister says.
"This process is the way we will be able to look every Australian in the eye and say that we have done the work."
Australian Associated Press