The demise of the carbon price closes one chapter in the tortured tale of Australia’s climate change policy. But the story is far from over.

So long as the Coalition supports Australia’s target of cutting levels of greenhouse gas emissions to 5 per cent below those of 2000 by 2020, the Abbott government has a challenge to meet - not to mention what happens after the decade’s end.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt has said repeatedly the government’s alternative to a carbon tax or emissions trading scheme (ETS) - the $2.55 billion plan to pay polluters to cut emissions voluntarily - will achieve the 5 per cent reduction goal if not more.

“All the signs are we will not just achieve our targets but do it easily, on the basis of early indications in the community,” Mr Hunt has said.

Mr Hunt’s claims will be queried each time the government holds an auction for the handouts, with the results alone likely to keep climate policy under scrutiny.

That’s assuming the government can get around Senate opposition – Clive Palmer derides the “direct action” policy as “rubbish” – to implement a workable scheme.

17 per cent trajectory

The task, though, is not so simple with one Environment Department official saying Australia is “not remotely” on track to reach the 5 per cent target. And that’s before rising global – and local – concern about carbon emissions warming the planet stokes demands for greater ambition everywhere.

The Climate Change Authority – an independent agency the government was blocked from scrapping by Labor, the Greens and Palmer United Party senators – says Australia’s 2012 emissions of about 600 million tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent were 2.5 per cent above 2000 levels.

“In the absence of a carbon price or other effective policies, emissions are projected to grow to 685 million tonnes of CO2-e [carbon dioxide equivalent] in 2020, 17 per cent above 2000 levels,” it said in February.

Falling electricity demand and greater use of renewable energy such as wind and solar has helped curb emissions - as has the two-year old carbon tax. Emissions last year fell 0.8 per cent, the most in 24 years of tracking.

Rising gas prices, though, will most likely see a shift back to coal-fired power in coming years, while new LNG plants and coalmines will spur emissions growth from those sectors. Any weakening by the government of the Renewable Energy Target - a widely expected outcome of its current review - will also make cutting emissions a harder job.

Almost all economists favour a carbon price - whether a tax or an ETS - as a cheaper approach than regulation.

The carbon tax, at a fixed $25.40 a tonne since July 1, was to have switched to a floating one set by an emissions trading market next July.

The market would have been linked to Europe’s ETS, where prices are now about a quarter of Australia’s but which traded as high as $48 a tonne in 2008 when the Rudd government began work on the scheme.

'Ground zero'

Martijn Wilder, a lawyer who heads Baker & McKenzie’s Global Environmental Markets unit, says Australian policies are reverting to about 1999 when he first started to work on the issue.

“We’re going to be back to ground zero and have to start all over again,” he said.

Mr Palmer has proposed an alternative ETS with a zero-dollar price that would only rise when major trading partners take comparable steps to curb carbon.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who campaigned incessantly against a carbon price since grabbing the Liberal leadership from Malcolm Turnbull in December 2009, is unlikely to back it even if such a bill could originate in the Senate.

Under the current outlook, “there’ll be no law at all, and there’ll be no cap on emissions”, Mr Wilder said. “That puts us back to the very beginning.”

Surveys indicate that only a sliver of the population – including some Coalition members and crossbench senators - believes that climate change is not happening, or is a hoax cooked up by corrupt scientists who have somehow captured the world’s scientific academies and meteorological agencies.

Others, though, take a more calculating approach, said Frank Jotzo, director of the Australian National University’s Centre for Climate Economics & Policy.

“There are many people who work in this field who are deeply pessimistic about the prospects for global climate change action,” said Mr Jotzo, who began work on an ETS for the government in 1999.

“Their conclusion from that is that it is not worth trying, and that Australia’s interests lie in the export of fossil fuels,” he said.

“It is a deeply cynical view but it is a widespread view.”

Mr Abbott, known to be doubtful about humans’ role in changing the climate, hinted at some sympathy for that view at a Minerals Council dinner in May.

“If there was one fundamental problem, above all else, with the carbon tax [it] was that it said to our people, it said to the wider world, that a commodity which in many years is our biggest single export, somehow should be left in the ground and not sold,” Mr Abbott said.

“Well really and truly, I can think of few things more damaging to our future.”

International pressure

That “wider world”, though, is likely to have a say, with a series of major global gatherings over the next year and a half.

These include a United Nations climate meeting in September – in which Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop and not Mr Hunt will likely attend – the G20 leaders' summit in Brisbane in November, and a global summit to draw up a new climate treaty in Paris next year.

Climate policy “will in fact remain on the agenda for Australia by virtue of its international pressure on Australia to do something”, Mr Jotzo said.

Connie Hedegaard, the European Union's Commissioner for climate action offered a taste of overseas reaction on social media site Twitter:

I regret #Australia #carbontaxrepeal just as new carbon pricing initiatives are emerging all around the world http://t.co/TTdd9XmO3U #auspol — Connie Hedegaard (@CHedegaardEU) July 17, 2014

In a comment posting, Ms Hedegaard said the EU "is convinced that pricing carbon is not only the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions, but also THE tool to make the economic paradigm shift the world needs".

The Environment Department official bemoaned the role of Australian companies in failing to add domestic support of a carbon price even though many of them maintain an internal value on emissions on the expectation carbon will one day have a cost.

“Businesses quietly say they price emissions at $30-$40 a tonne,” the official said, declining to be named. “If you ask them if they’re willing to pay it, then it’s a different story. They’re hoping they’ll get away with paying nothing for years.”

Despite political fatigue over the issue, the official would be “astounded” if a carbon price did not return in Australia.

“Nature abhors a vacuum and will fill it,” the official said.