The latest survey by the Australian Industry Group of 810 companies in manufacturing and commercial construction sectors makes for sobering news.

While 78% of companies believed they had a responsibility to contribute to a reduction in carbon emissions, only 10% of companies said they were informed enough to manage the risks associated with climate change.

In many respects this should not come as a surprise. Greenhouse emissions for the past decade and a half have not been the highest priority for many Australian businesses

The good news is that for most businesses, controls over greenhouse emissions will not represent a profound change to their costs or competitiveness.

Firstly most businesses do not directly emit a substantial amount of greenhouse emissions. The sources of greenhouse emissions are concentrated in a few select sectors of the economy largely focused on heavy industry, mining and energy production. Only businesses that directly emit above 50,000 tonnes of CO2 in a year or have a single facility that emits above 25,000 tonnes will become legally liable under a future emissions trading scheme. Out of the 703,000 business sites in Australia, only 576 meet this threshold.

While there will be flow though implications for those businesses that consume energy, not just those that emit greenhouse emissions, for the vast majority of Australian businesses energy represents a very small proportion of costs and is not a major factor in competitiveness. The Victorian Government commissioned a study back in 2003 which illustrated for each industry sector how much energy costs represented as a proportion of their material costs and turnover. For the vast majority of industries electricity rarely exceeds more than 2% of overall material costs and gas no more than 1%.

Greenhouse emission controls will have implications but these will be largely constrained to the energy sector, heavy industry and mining. These are important sectors but the vast majority of the economy will only be minimally affected.