In my work with many Australian businesses, I have been fascinated by how much their adoption of changes depends on how they see an issue.
If it’s a matter of minimising risk and compliance costs, there is a fundamentally negative approach: aim to limit the damage. This involves delegating the problem to someone and assuming it will cost something to fix it.
For example, when addressing a carbon price, these companies might cut back on staffing, try to pass the extra costs on to their customers or invest in expensive energy supply options.
These firms are likely to adopt expensive “end of pipe” solutions, and strategies that do create problems for some groups in their organisations. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
On the other hand, if the change is seen as potentially good for the business, people across the organisation can be seen discussing it over lunch. They explore ways of integrating the solutions into their core business. They look at how they can maximise the benefits.
Faced with a carbon price, these businesses are more likely to increase sales by improving the energy efficiency of their products, and install energy efficiency measures that also improve product quality or productivity.
So, these businesses typically do profit from their efforts to cut emissions. Indeed, they may even reframe their business models to capture the potential opportunities.
The argument appears to be that through exploring an energy efficient strategy, companies can make money. Such strategies existed prior to the tax, however, and the idea here appears to be that they weren’t pursued because businesses were not interested in their own long term profitability. Alternatively, they were simply too ignorant to implement them, and the government knows better than they do.
A far simpler explanation is that, while a company can implement energy efficient strategies and remain profitable, any that aren’t currently doing so have identified other priorities which will lead to them making even more money.
This all assumes the lack of a direct subsidy, which is bad policy in its own right.
My favourite part of the article, though:
Global studies cast serious doubt on the relationship between energy growth and economic success
Bitch, please.
