Author: Mr February

The Minister’s chart-junk part 2

Simon Johnson guest posts on the mysterious number of emissions units allocated to emitters and a junk chart in the Ministry for the Environment’s Report on the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme.

You may recall that I previously commented on the low quality of data presentation in the Ministry for the Environment report Report on the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme.

My specific concern was that the report did not clearly indicate how many emission units (NZUs) had been allocated for free to emitters. Or, to say that again but slightly differently, what was the level of subsidy emitters had received in units?

Why am I going on about subsidies? Well, the point of an emissions trading scheme (ETS) is to place a carbon price on emissions. Free allocation of units to emitters unequivocally lessens the incentive effect of the carbon price. So free allocation is unequivocally a subsidy.  The Australian Productivity Commission research report on carbon prices Carbon Emission Policies in Key Economies notes that all emissions policies involve either subsidies or prices and that imposing one measure implicitly imposes the other as well  (page 49). Continue reading “The Minister’s chart-junk part 2”

The NZ ETS Review 2011: Clear signals for business as usual

Simon Johnson’s guest post offers prompt comment on the ETS review.

Minister for Climate Change Issues Nick Smith has finally released the delayed report of the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme Review 2011. The 98-page report is titled Doing New Zealand’s Fair Share, The Emissions Trading Scheme Review 2011.

The review panel chaired by former Rogernome David Caygill gave their report to Smith on 30 June 2011. Two and half months later and one week into the Rugby World Cup, Smith has let the report out into the world.

From the title of his press release, Slowing of ETS recommended by Review Panel, I think Smith is pretty happy with the report. It also uses some of Smith’s favourite phrases; such as “Doing our fair share” and balancing emissions reductions with costs to businesses.

“The Panel acknowledges there needs to be an appropriate balance between  managing these short-term costs and providing a clear long-term direction. Given the current international uncertainty and the challenging state of the economy, this means there should be measures in place which ensure the increase in the costs of the ETS occurs at an appropriate pace.” Continue reading “The NZ ETS Review 2011: Clear signals for business as usual”

Charting unexplained territory in the NZ ETS Report

So far, I have posted on the comprehensiveness of the NZ ETS vs the Australian Clean Energy Future ETS, the Kyoto chart junk in the Report on the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme, and the over-supply of the New Zealand Units in 2010.

This post mixes two of these ideas; searching out bad charts and looking again at the supply side of the NZ ETS market, how many New Zealand Units were allocated for free to emitters and businesses.

The Report on the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme provides in Figure 5 a pie chart of the number of New Zealand Units (NZUs) surrendered by emitters.

Fig 5
NZU surrenders

Although the pie chart is Kaiser Fung’s least favourite type of chart, this pie chart isn’t too bad. There are a manageable number of categories; only five; and no 3-D effects. The key point is clear from the pie chart, that about two-thirds of NZUs surrendered were purchased from foresters. Also the chart follows the Ministry for the Environment usual practice of providing the original data underneath so you can do you own chart. I did a bar chart of the data, re-labelling the “Other” NZUs as “Free NZUs”. Continue reading “Charting unexplained territory in the NZ ETS Report”

The over-allocated units in the Report on the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme

Simon Johnson continues his series of guest posts looking at the Australian and New Zealand carbon pricing schemes.

Finally I have got past the chartjunk and I have read the Report on the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme that Minister for Climate Change Issues Nick Smith released on 1 August 2011.

Perhaps the first point to make is that the NZ ETS has now been though a complete compliance period, the six months from 1 July 2010 (when energy and industry entered) to 31 December 2010, where both buyers (emitters) and sellers (foresters) of emissions units were in the NZ ETS market. So we should be able to make an assessment of how the NZ ETS is working.

The same underlying information, emissions units issued and surrendered in the 2010 year, has already been available from the “central bank” for emissions units – the NZ Emissions Unit Register, run by the Ministry of Economic Development. The Climate Change Response Act requires certain information on emissions trading to be disclosed annually. The Ministry for the Environment’s Report on the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme is really this same trading information with some, ugh, “100% Pure” photo shoot pictures, quite a few junk charts and several text-boxes. Continue reading “The over-allocated units in the Report on the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme”

The NZ ETS Review 2011 and the Minister’s Kyoto Chartjunk

In a previous guest post Simon Johnson looked at the new Australian carbon pricing scheme. Here he begins to examine the report on how the New Zealand scheme is faring.

A few days ago I was intending to carefully read the Report on the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme that Minister for Climate Change Issues Nick Smith released last Monday and write a considered review.

However, I only got as far as Nick Smith’s foreword on the the third page when I got stopped in my tracks by Figure 3, a misleading piece of chartjunk if I ever saw one, Its about New Zealand being on target to meet its obligations under the Kyoto Protocol. Here it is. Continue reading “The NZ ETS Review 2011 and the Minister’s Kyoto Chartjunk”