Direct Action funds 'spent on projects that would have happened anyway'

Payments to greenhouse gas emitters more likely to go to reduction schemes that would have taken place without government funding, says economist

The government's $2.55bn emissions reduction fund, which pays greenhouse gas emitters to pollute less, will inevitably pay for reductions that would have happened anyway, for the same reason that secondhand car markets are full of lemons, an economic analysis has concluded.

The centrepiece of the government's Direct Action climate policy is a reverse-auction, in which polluters bid for funding to pollute less.