Tag: ETS

Pure Advantage report good in parts, but silent on carbon pricing

Mr February (aka Simon Johnson) examines the latest Pure Advantage report promoting green economics. It’s all great sustainability stuff except that it fails to mention carbon pricing (emissions trading schemes or carbon taxes). How seriously can we take the Pure Advantage “green growth” message on climate change, when they are not upfront about their position on a price on carbon?

Pure Advantage, the green business advocacy group, have just released a new green growth report titled ‘New Zealand’s Position in the Green Race’. Hot Topic has posted about Pure Advantage before and PA founder Phillip Mills provided a guest post on how NZ needs a bold low-carbon business strategy.

The report has three goals: to define green growth, to summarise New Zealand’s uninspiring environmental and economic performance, and to propose “a process for developing a green growth recipe for NZ and a strategy for delivering it” (page 27). The basic idea of the report is clear from this graphic — where ‘Green Growth’ starts as an amorphous brain storm of ideas, which then gets focused through the ‘NZ Green Race’ report and an economic analysis, before emerging like a butterfly from a chrysalis as a number of strategies and policies.

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Zombie ETS infects RMA with climate insanity

Simon Johnson/aka Mr February argues that the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme has become living-dead “zombie” legislation that infects other statutes with its own virulent climate change insanity. The example is a recent decision by the Environment Court that it can’t consider climate change impacts of coal mining as described by James Hansen in the Forest and Bird appeal of the resource consents for the opencast ‘Escarpment’ coal mine.

The other week I watched the zombie genre film 28 Weeks Later. The turning point in the film came when British actor Robert Carlyle kissed his wife and was instantly infected with the ‘Rage Virus’, which of course meant he had to turn into a homicidal-virus spreading-living-dead zombie who would then infect the rest of the surviving population of post-Rage Virus London. A great zombie movie moment!

For me, another much less amusing zombie moment, was last week’s news from TVNZ, Radio NZ, the Otago Daily Times, and the Dominion Post, that the Environment Court had declared that climate change effects from coal mining will not be considered in Forest and Bird’s appeal of the consents granted for the Escarpment Mine Project, an opencast coal mine on the ecologically sensitive Denniston Plateau.

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Helter smelter: NZ Aluminium Smelters wins the 2011 Roger Award

Simon Johnson reports that NZ Aluminium Smelters/Rio Tinto Alcan NZ have just won the 2011 Roger Award for Worst Transnational Corporation operating in Aotearoa/New Zealand, for milking the NZETS.

Every year the group Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) awards a Roger Award for bad multinational corporate behaviour. Past winners have been Warner Brothers for the Hobbit film employment law change and British American Tobacco.

Readers may recall I wrote some posts about the excessive allocation of free emissions units from the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme to NZ Aluminium Smelters/Rio Tinto Alcan NZ.

I concluded that in 2010 the Rio Tinto Alcan NZ received 135% more emissions units than it needed for its greenhouse emissions, as an undisclosed amount of units were to compensate it for undisclosed ETS-related electricity costs. In other words, Rio Tinto Alcan NZ would pay a higher ‘carbon’ price if it was exempt from the NZ ETS, as they would at least be paying some ‘carbon’ price as a ‘downstream’ electricity user.

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Weakened NZ ETS not responsible economic management

Tim Groser, the new Minister for Climate Change Issues, is adamant in his defence of the intention to further delay bringing the agricultural sector into the Emissions Trading Scheme beyond the current date of 2015 unless there are adequate abatement options open to them by then and unless other countries step up to the mark with mitigation measures.  His remarks on Morning Report on Thursday made it clear that the interests of the overall economy were more important than mitigation of the 0.2% of the global greenhouse gas emissions that New Zealand is responsible for.  He spoke of the difficulty of managing the economy through tough times.

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NZ ETS to be watered down (again), but emissions news good

New Zealand’s new Minister for Climate Change Issues and chief climate negotiator, Tim Groser, yesterday announced the government’s intended changes to the Emissions Trading Scheme following last years ETS Review. There will be a limited period for consultation (to May 11) on the proposals before legislation is put before Parliament. The consultation document (PDF) and meeting dates are available here. Key points:

  • Agriculture’s entry to the ETS may be delayed beyond 2015.
  • There will be no increase to the $25/tonne unit price cap.
  • The “two for one” transitional provision for big emitters will be phased out more gradually.
  • The government will give itself powers to auction emissions units.
  • There will be a review of the allocation of carbon credits to pre-1990 forests to take into account the changes to the forestry regime agreed in Durban last year.

Groser also announced the release today of New Zealand’s net emissions position for the 2008-12 Kyoto reporting period, now expected to be a surplus (that is, under NZ’s target) of 23.1 million tonnes, up from 21.9 mt in 2011.

News that agriculture may continue to escape carbon constraints is hardly surprising, given the government’s reluctance to annoy its heartland farming and agribusiness supporters, but it appears willing to risk confrontation with Maori forestry interests on pre-1990 carbon credit allocations. My view is that this tinkering around the edges of the scheme is designed to put the ETS into a kind of domestic political holding pattern until the shape of future international arrangements begins to emerge. Groser doesn’t want to frighten the horses until he absolutely has to, as this quote from Brian Fallow’s piece in the NZ Herald today might be taken to indicate:

Preferences for changing areas of the policy would vary a lot depending on what assumptions were made about the future carbon price, Groser said.

“If you think it will remain at the current low levels, you will reach one set of conclusions. Take a different view of the trajectory of the carbon price – and above all, this is a long game we are playing – and you may reach quite different conclusions.”

Getting international action on emissions reductions is certainly turning out to be a long game. We can only hope that it doesn’t turn into the diplomatic equivalent of a timeless test, and that the climate system is kind enough to give us time to play it. I’d not want to bet on either proposition.