It's fairly straightforward. It will speed things up by using...

It's fairly straightforward. It will speed things up by using some of the money from the carbon price to invest in renewable technologies. It will also make renewable technologies more competitive, even without the incentives. It's a two-pronged approach. Eventually the new technologies will be cheaper than the old ones. The cost will drop as the volume increases. Economics 101.

Over the next two or three decades there should be a significant shift to renewables.

This approach of charging for unwanted by-products and using the money to purchase clean technology has been used before successfully. It's known to work. It's also being used for carbon elsewhere, like in India, China, Europe, the UK, some states of the USA, provinces in Canada etc etc. We didn't invent the process.

If you have a better idea for how to do it - let Garnaut or Gillard know about it.