Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten is under pressure from Labor's rank and file to take ambitious climate targets to the next federal election.
A group within the ALP has spent months briefing local branches on its campaign to propel Labor back to the front of the climate debate.
The group, Labor Environment Action Network, known as LEAN, has signed up 150 branches across the country to support its "50/50" campaign calling for 50 per cent of electricity production from renewable sources by 2030.
LEAN predicts it will have 200 branches, roughly a fifth of the 1000-odd branches nationwide, signed up within weeks and claims to have the backing of some active former ministers, including retired senator John Faulkner.
Over the past 12 months, four ALP state conferences (NSW, Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia) have endorsed LEAN's resolution for the adoption of the Climate Change Authority's demanding pollution reduction targets.
But it is at the upcoming ALP national conference where the important debate will take place on the party's next election platform.
Mr Shorten has committed Labor to taking an emissions trading scheme to the next election and opposition environment spokesman Mark Butler has promised an "ambitious post-2020 policy" for renewables based on current consultation with industry and the finance sector.
The party's emissions reduction targets will be informed by the next report of the Climate Change Authority, due about June. The Coalition is expected to outline its targets in July.
Labor went to the 2011 election with a platform that included renewable targets of "around 40 per cent of generation in 2050" and promised to deliver cuts in air pollution of at least 23 per cent by 2020 and 80 per cent below 2000 levels by 2050.
But after a bruising experience with carbon pricing during the Gillard and Rudd years, the current party platform does not specify any targets at all.
LEAN, co-ordinated by former environmental campaigner Felicity Wade, is pushing for 50 per cent renewables by 2030, a 50 per cent reduction in carbon pollution by 2030 and, or the latest Climate Change Authority recommendations.
The group also supports a reintroduction of "the architecture for delivering a low carbon future delivered by the last federal Labor government" – or a market-based carbon price, known as the carbon tax.
A spokeswoman for Mr Butler said LEAN was a "great grassroots campaigning body which believes in strong action [to tackle] climate change just as much as the Labor caucus".
Meanwhile, the fight over a new renewable energy target continues, with crossbenchers set to demand the government shut wind power out of a portion of the RET in exchange for backing the inclusion of native timber burning.
Liberal Democratic senator David Leyonhjelm, Family First senator Bob Day and independent John Madigan will support the government's proposal to bring wood waste into the scheme, but could seek conditions that would reserve part of the 33,000 gigawatt-hour target for solar and hydro power only.
The three senators are vocal opponents of wind turbines and sit on a parliamentary committee examining their health effects that held public hearings in Canberra on Tuesday.
