Author: Mr February

Nick Smith fails the smelter spin test

What does The Hon Dr Nick Smith, Minister for Climate Change Issues, say when the Greens accuse him of subsidising greenhouse gas polluters. Well it seems he denies it and he produces instructive soundbites of spin. I am informed that at Wellington’s Oxfam election and climate change debate he said that the NZ Aluminium Smelter Ltd’s operation at Tiwai Point is the only aluminium smelter in the world exposed to a carbon price.

He has used this soundbite a few times. For example, in Parliament on 29 September 2011:

“..the aluminium smelter in Bluff is the only aluminium smelter in the world to face any price at all for its greenhouse gas emissions”.

TV One’s ‘Q and A’ programme:

“the New Zealand Aluminium Smelter in Bluff, it is the only one in the world that pays any face at all for carbon pricing” ((NB By ‘pay any face’ I think he means ‘face any price’))

Parliament on September 2009:

“…the Bluff smelter, on 1 July next year, will be the very first to face a carbon price for its pollution. The European scheme excludes aluminium smelters until 2013…”

Does Nick’s soundbite stand up to scrutiny? Not very well…

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120% Pure Subsidy: Part 2

I have had some very good comments on my recent post, 120% Pure Subsidy, about the quantity of free emissions units that NZ Aluminium Smelters Limited (NZAS) has received under the NZ ETS in 2010. Enough good comments that they justify a second post on the subject.

Simon Terry of the Sustainability Council points out that we shouldn’t be surprised at the high level of free allocation of units to big emitters. Simon Terry documented this in June 2008, in the report Corporate Welfare Under the ETS, which looked at free allocation of units to eight energy intensive companies under the proposed NZ ETS.

Continue reading “120% Pure Subsidy: Part 2”

Trans-Tasman Emissions Trading Scheme Challenge: Part Two

With the passage of the Australian “Clean Energy Future” legislation, Simon Johnson (aka Mr February) makes another trans-tasman emissions trading scheme comparison.

Yesterday the Australian Parliament adopted legislation for its greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme. It’s time, therefore, for another post on the theme of the “Trans-Tasman Emissions Trading Scheme test series”, looking at the key differences between the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme and the Australian Emissions Trading Scheme. The number one key difference between the two emissions trading schemes is in how clearly each scheme sets the carbon price.

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120% Pure Subsidy

Nick SmithLast week, (29 September 2011 to be precise), Green MP Kennedy Graham was questioning Climate Change Issues Minister Nick Smith over his apparent lack of consistency on subsidies for fossil fuel industries. Graham was wondering why Nick Smith and Climate Change and Trade Negotiations Minister Tim Groser were happy on the one hand to oppose billion dollar subsidies to fossil fuel industries on the international stage, while on the other hand have the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme include subsidies in the form of generous free allocation of emissions units to big industrial emitters of GHGs.

Nick Smith replied:

“…this Government is not providing subsidies to greenhouse gas polluters. I remind the member that we are the only country outside the EU to have an emissions trading scheme. Our aluminium smelter in Bluff is the only aluminium smelter in the world to face any price at all for its greenhouse gas emissions”.

Lets examine this assertion in two parts; that the Tiwai Point Aluminum Smelter, receives no subsidies from Government and it faces a carbon/GHG price.

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Stating the pleading obvious (big dairy and the ETS review)

A commenter or two has started to hit back at the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme Review 2011 and the New Zealand Herald editorial Farmers must share burden on emissions for saying that there should be no further delay of the 2015 date when agricultural emissions will enter the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ ETS). The Herald editorial had the temerity to comment on the government’s “extraordinary generosity to farmers” in changing the “modest impositions” of the NZ ETS on agriculture so that it “will become truly timorous”.

David Anderson, who is described as a former editor of Rural News and a communications consultant in “teh” (sic) agribusiness sector, has just had an opinion piece in the Herald (27 September) arguing for further delaying agriculture’s entry into the NZ ETS.

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