THE Rudd government ramped up the environmental benefits of its botched $2.45 billion home insulation scheme by grossly overstating the cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that could be achieved by households, expert independent analysis says.
The independent analysis undermines claims by Kevin Rudd and Environment Minister Peter Garrett that the retrofitting of insulation into 2.7 million homes would produce reductions of 49.4 million tonnes of carbon by 2020.
The Department of Climate Change - which did much of the modelling for the Rudd government - has told The Australian the claim of 49.4 million tonnes came from working out that new insulation would result in each household cutting its emissions by 1.65 tonnes a year on average.
But the benefits claimed by the government were twice the size of the benefits claimed by the two biggest beneficiaries of the insulation scheme, manufacturers CSR and Fletcher, when they were vigorously lobbying the government to fund a national roll out of insulation. Further, the benefits claimed by the government were four to five times higher than the number derived from conservative calculations by associate professor Terry Williamson, a thermal performance expert at the University of Adelaide. Read more.
The independent analysis undermines claims by Kevin Rudd and Environment Minister Peter Garrett that the retrofitting of insulation into 2.7 million homes would produce reductions of 49.4 million tonnes of carbon by 2020.
The Department of Climate Change - which did much of the modelling for the Rudd government - has told The Australian the claim of 49.4 million tonnes came from working out that new insulation would result in each household cutting its emissions by 1.65 tonnes a year on average.
But the benefits claimed by the government were twice the size of the benefits claimed by the two biggest beneficiaries of the insulation scheme, manufacturers CSR and Fletcher, when they were vigorously lobbying the government to fund a national roll out of insulation. Further, the benefits claimed by the government were four to five times higher than the number derived from conservative calculations by associate professor Terry Williamson, a thermal performance expert at the University of Adelaide. Read more.