Australia's largest greenhouse polluter has to exit carbon emitting business to mitigate financial risk: AGL boss

Australia's largest greenhouse gas emitter says the company needs to be out of the carbon emitting business to simply manage financial risk and rehabilitation costs.

AGL, established in 1837, was previously Australia's largest investor in renewable energy. However, since 2012 it has increased acquisitions of coal-fired power stations to become the nation's largest investor in coal, and therefore the nation's largest greenhouse case emitter.

In early February, after facing sustained pressure from environmental groups, the producer announced it was quitting its coal-seam gas business as plunging oil prices had undermined the economics of its projects, following an earlier announcement it would shut its coal-fired power stations by mid century.

"We're not necessarily out of the coal business and it's not fossil fuels because we still use gas. We need to be out of the CO2 emissions business," AGL chief executive Andrew Vesey told the Guardian Australia on Tuesday.

"We've done a lot of thinking around this and we believe our view of the future will be restrains on carbon emissions."

Vesey said his motives have nothing to do with the science, instead it's a financial risk mitigation if markets, customers, investors and government all accept and make policies towards climate mitigation efforts.

"It's irrelevant what I believe," Vesey said.

Vesey added the expense of decommissioning AGL's coal-fired power plants - due to come offline by 2050 - and associated mines, returning them to their natural state through mandated rehabilitation efforts was also a concern at the top of the company's "issue list". Endit