President-Elect Joseph R. Biden comes to office with what has, correctly, been called a “transformational” plan for action to curb climate change and to cope with its unavoidable consequences.

The cornerstone of his policy1 — officially called the Biden Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice — is to recommit the United States to the Paris Agreement on climate change, and to set a target for the US to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. That target is generally accepted as being in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change which seeks to limit global climate heating to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and ideally, to keep it closer to 1.5 degrees.2

The impact of the world’s largest economy pivoting to this new policy cannot be understated. It is particularly important given that it tops off two months in which several of the world’s major economies have now announced net-zero commitments.

The Commonwealth Government has accepted a number of recommendations from the King Review of Australia’s Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) that would incentivise abatement opportunities in sectors which have had limited participation in the ERF to date. These could allow carbon projects to earn revenue faster through compressed crediting; allow greater…

Investment in renewable energies is a vital part of the global strategy to address climate change. Many States provide strong support and incentives to encourage investments and accelerate the growth of this sector. Other States, such as Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic, have withdrawn incentives or subsidies that were…

The Baker McKenzie Global Climate Change practice expects 2020 to bring both scaled up developments and new challenges in a broad-based response to climate change. Given widespread coverage of the shortcomings of last December’s climate negotiations in Madrid, it may seem counterintuitive to anticipate positive movement on climate action this…

The energy transition from fossil-based fuels to lower carbon alternatives is underway. While it is a threat for the fossil fuel based energy sector, it is also driving significant new opportunities, including demand for reliable and cost effective energy storage and, with it, demand for different types of minerals, such…

On 13 May 2019, new regulations governing the commercial installation of solar panels on all Queensland solar farms came into force. What are the regulations? The new regulations were announced by the Queensland government on 9 April 2019 and are contained in the Electrical Safety (Solar Farms) Amendment Regulation 2019 (Qld),…