Point Carbon analysts said that UK's plan to introduce a price floor for carbon emissions permits may harm business by introducing a £9.3 ($15) billion burden, but will likely cut emissions from the energy industry by 5.3 percent. The proposed floor will begin at £16 ($26) per metric ton in 2013 and rise to £30 ($49) per metric ton by 2030. However, according to Point Carbon, the price could rise to €54 ($78) per metric ton by 2020, while the rest of EU's Emissions Trading Scheme sees prices closer to €36 ($52).

Electricity retailer Origin Energy said that Australia is likely to overshoot its 2020 renewable energy targets by about six percent due to falling electricity demand and the penetration of household solar systems. Origin called for a change to the target, which will be reviewed this year by the Climate Change Authority. Russell Marsh, policy director for the Clean Energy Council, said that the level of demand for 2020 was unknown, and switching to a more flexible target would not give the certainty needed to drive investment.

Australia is slated to tax carbon at a rate of A$23 per metric ton, but it has halved the number of companies liable for the tax to 500 companies. Though the price, reported by newspapers in advance of an official announcement, is roughly in line with expectations and the price of emissions in Europe, Prime Minister Julia Gillard refused to confirm reports, saying she would not "play any games" about the price in an interview with Sky TV.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO's) World Heritage Committee expressed "extreme concern" at the Queensland government's backing of Curtis Island multi-billion dollar liquid natural gas processing facilities, which require dredging around the island and dramatically increasing shipping traffic in the local port.

The Tasmanian Forests Intergovernmental Agreement has sparked new hostilities and caused one timber group to back out as some claimed that the deal was fundamentally altered in the 11th hour before Prime Minister Julia Gillard signed it August 7. The deal includes provisions for compensation to forest companies whose contracts cannot be met outside of the new 430,000 hectares of protected land; industry representatives said that they had believed they could log the forests if their contracts required it.

Australia's Senate voted last week that debate on the federal government's carbon tax will not be extended beyond November 21. "This motion will allow at least 20 hours of debate in each of the two weeks," said Senate leader Joe Ludwig in response to criticism of the end date. "The Senate does need to consider the legislation but it doesn't need to do it in an exhaustive way." The treasury modeling of the impact was released last week, indicating a A$23 per ton starting price, as opposed to the original A$20 per ton models.

New South Wales will extend its ban on hydraulic fracturing until April to give the state, the most populous in Australia, time to strengthen standards for the extraction process. The move, which adds an additional three months to the state's moratorium, comes shortly after the release of a Senate committee report that recommended the suspension of all new coal seam gas projects in southern Queensland and northern New South Wales, pending further research on fracking's effects.

A long awaited energy policy paper from Martin Ferguson, Australia's Minister for Resources and Energy, said that an emissions standard for new power plants, a campaign promise that Prime Minister Julia Gillard said would end the building of "dirty" power plants, had become redundant in the face of the nation's carbon market. The Labor Party's proposed regulations would have required newly built power plants to emit less than .86 tons of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour and be carbon capture and storage ready.

The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre proposed a plan last week that would result in 430,000 hectares of forest reserves being managed by Aborigines instead of the Parks and Wildlife Service. Any agreement would have to pass through Tasmanian parliament, and Premier Lara Geddings has stated that she is concerned that a deal would derail the agreement to end nearly all logging in public native forests.

A report released last week said that carbon pricing is Australia's cheapest, most effective way to cut pollution. The report, by Australia's Productivity Commission, assessed how nine major economies were taking climate change action and was requested by Prime Minister Gillard to deflect political opposition to her plan. "The consistent finding from this study is that much lower cost abatement could be achieved through broad, explicitly carbon pricing approaches, irrespective of the policy settings in competitor economies," the report said.