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A Cabinet minister says the Australian government will consider making electrical power companies pay for greenhouse gas pollution they create, three years after it scrapped a national carbon tax.

The conservative government rejected all polluter-pays options in 2014 when it repealed Australia's 3-year-old carbon tax levied against the nation's biggest industrial polluters.

But Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg told Australian Broadcasting Corp. on Monday that charging power generators fueled by coal and natural gas for their pollution is under consideration as the government considers ways to achieve its carbon gas reduction targets.

He said while his government rejected the previous center-left Labor Party government's policy of charging all major industrial polluters, the electricity industry produced a third of Australia's greenhouse gases and could face its own charges.