HEATING and cooling are the big electricity guzzlers in most homes but with rising electricity prices, incorrectly used or poorly maintained everyday household appliances can prove costly. Origin Energy efficiency advocate Anne Armansin says a television left on all day could take over as the most costly item in the home to run. She says [...]
The strategy To work out whether I’ll be compensated for the carbon tax. It’s so confusing! How does the compensation work? It’s being delivered in two forms – through tax cuts and welfare payments. To get a tax cut, you need to earn less than $80,000 a year, while welfare recipients will automatically get an [...]
Schools will pay an extra $200 million annually for power under the carbon tax, or about $57 per student, and families can expect to foot the bill. Federal opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne said the carbon tax would add 10 per cent to electricity bills and nine per cent to gas bills. Schools are already [...]
THE state’s small- and medium-sized businesses are reaping the benefits of government energy-efficiency programs, saving a combined $70 million in power costs for about $8 million in government subsidies in the past two years, new data shows. So far, 345 dairies have participated in energy-efficiency programs in NSW and some have saved as much as [...]
The largest rooftop solar panel system in Australia has been unveiled at the University of Queensland. Five thousand solar grids, which have been installed on four buildings at the university’s St Lucia campus, are collectively the size of one-and-a-half football fields. UQ physicist Paul Meredith said the $7.75 million solar generating system would produce about [...]
RMIT energy researcher Alan Pears has a simple explanation of the effect of a carbon price on household power bills. ”One tonne of greenhouse gas emitted costs roughly $175 electricity. When a carbon price comes in, it will equal about $200,” he says. ”The other way to look at it is if you save a [...]
The federal government appears to have pushed back its own deadline for announcing details of an agreed carbon price mechanism with the Australian Greens and independent MPs. The government had been keen to release details of the scheme in early July, a year ahead of its start date. But Prime Minister Julia Gillard has sought [...]
The federal government will provide extra compensation to the nation’s lowest income households to offset price rises from the carbon tax. “Three million of the lower income households will get a safety net buffer of 20 per cent more than the expected impact on them of the flow-through of the carbon price, because we understand [...]
Parents with three children earning up to $128,000 will receive tax cuts as part of the federal government’s carbon tax compensation plan, News Ltd reports today. As well, it reports that families where both parents work will be able to claim tax cuts and family payment increases, and pensioners will gain upfront compensation of between [...]
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has been forced to backpedal from a promise that 7 million Australian households won’t be worse off under Labor’s carbon tax. Ms Gillard today told ABC Television that “7 million Australian households won’t see a cent lost through carbon pricing”. But when asked about that pledge her office was quick to [...]
