Tag: forestry

Tall trees

pine.gifSetting emissions targets means more than just making direct emissions cuts — it also means growing our carbon sinks. Climate change minister Nick Smith seems to want to ignore this, insisting (once more) in his interview with Kathryn Ryan this morning that because NZ’s emissions were now running 24% above 1990 levels, that a 40% target for 2020 would mean cutting emissions by 64%. That is, of course, nonsense, because it ignores the role played by our prolific forests. In a timely reminder of the carbon sink potential of forestry in NZ conditions, the Science Media Centre today released a paper by Associate Professor Euan Mason and senior lecturer Dr David Evison of the School of Forestry at the University of Canterbury. In their “Comment on forestry and climate change” [PDF here, available to HT readers by kind permission of the SMC] they say:

New forest planting is a very feasible and viable method to reduce New Zealand’s net emissions. New plantings will provide capacity for New Zealand to implement cost-effective reductions in industry and agricultural emissions, and possibly to develop new sequestration technologies.

They go on to look at ways of increasing the forestry sector’s contribution to emission mitigation (the very thing that Smith is ignoring):

With the right policy settings and with appropriate help for landowners, we could
markedly increase the GHG benefits of forestry by:

1. increasing the rate of new forest establishment;
2. increasing sequestration in existing forests; and
3. increasing the use of wood as a construction material

And here’s the kicker: they quote Piers MacLaren on the true potential of afforestation:

… if we consistently achieved a new planting rate of 50,000 ha/year, it would take the best part of a century before we established forest on all our eroding landscapes, and meanwhile we would have carbon credits to sell to others on the international market.

That’s the real challenge, the true potential that Smith and the government are missing. I can only speculate that the forestry industry doesn’t vote National.

In the meantime, I urge anyone who wants the facts about forest carbon sequestration in NZ and its potential for the future (as well as a good discussion of the policy challenges) to read this paper.

[CrowdedScouse]

Blackleg miner

NZcoal.jpgSolid Energy, NZ’s state-owned coal mining company, is promoting an alternative to an economy wide emissions trading scheme. According to Carbon News, the approach is being “heavily peddled to policy makers and others in Wellington”, and it is seen to have “great simplistic appeal”. Carbon News has made the document, A Durable Climate Change Strategy for New Zealand, available here.

The essence of the scheme, once you plough through Solid Energy’s reasons for disliking the ETS as currently proposed, is that the government should plant lots of trees, funded by a $1/tonne carbon levy applied across the economy. Lots and lots of trees — a million hectares of new exotic and native forest planted over the next 20-30 years. Solid Energy claims that “Kiwiforest” would provide enough cheap carbon sequestration to allow the economy to grow without the need to impose steep carbon prices. An ETS would only be introduced when there was a truly global interlinked network of carbon markets.

Sounds attractive, on the face of it. Who could object to planting lots of trees? Certainly not me. Unfortunately, as a national emissions strategy it looks too simplistic to be realistic, and on Solid Energy’s numbers delivers emissions reductions that aren’t credible.

Continue reading “Blackleg miner”

Games without frontiers

ClimCity.jpg

Jeux sans frontières realised in Clim’ City, an interesting learning game with obvious antecedents from Bordeaux’s Cap Sciences centre: reorganise the energy sources and economy of this French city and its surroundings – from ski field to beach resort – to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without crippling the economy. According to the Technology Review story, it’s not easy to “win”, but if you don’t speak at least a little French it’s impossible… 😉

I hope one of the English-speaking science centres does a translation: I can see this being a great teaching tool. Now, do I create an association des citoyennes or go straight to shifting the centrale thermique to burning biomass, but that means expanding the forestry sector, and perhaps I should make sure that the forests are protected against forest fires, what with the warming in the pipeline…

[Peter Gabriel]

Sitting in limbo

Parliament has risen for the summer recess, and New Zealand’s climate policy is reduced to a train wreck of repealed legislation and uncertainty about the emissions trading scheme. PM John Key confirmed under persistent questioning by Greens co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons yesterday that the ETS would not actually be put on hold. From Hansard:

Jeanette Fitzsimons: With regard to those parts of the emissions trading scheme that came into force on 1 January 2008—relating to forestry—will the Prime Minister or will he not put on hold the penalty regime for deforestation during 2008, and the credits that foresters expect to claim in January 2009 for the carbon sequestered by their forests this year?

Hon JOHN KEY: The current legislation and rules about deforestation stay in place, pending the outcome of the select committee.

Jeanette Fitzsimons: In that case, what precisely is the Prime Minister suspending or putting on hold, given that nothing else is due to come in until 2010 and he is retaining the parts that are already in force; or is the Prime Minister saying that the forestry bit may be taken out of force later, which means they will have to give their credits back?

Hon JOHN KEY: That is exactly the point. Nothing is coming in until 2010 outside of forestry. The high-level select committee will have reported back. It is the hope of the Government that the legislation that will replace the existing emissions trading scheme legislation will be in place long before January 2010.

Fitzsimons take on the exchange at Frogblog is worth a read. Meanwhile, let’s run through a little history. When the ETS was first launched, National supported it. Then they withdrew support for the legislation in the run-up to the election, but campaigned on keeping the basic ETS structure while tinkering with (also known as watering down) the settings. Post-election, to pacify Rodney and his pack of cranks, the ETS was to be put on hold while a select committee considered, amongst other things, whether a carbon tax might be better. Now, on the last day of this session, we learn they’re not going to do that, and the legislation stands until amended.

If this seems like a government that doesn’t know what it’s doing, then I’m not the only one to notice. Brian Fallow in today’s Herald is withering in his criticism. He notes Australia’s new — and disappointing — targets for carbon dioxide reductions:

It ill behoves anyone on this side of the Tasman to be scornful about that, however. At least the Australians have an intermediate target. We have none. At least they have a climate change policy. Ours is in shambolic limbo.

Worse, Key considers that the Rudd government is on the right track, describing Aussie policy as “a very considered and balanced approach to climate change” in Parliament. As Fallow memorably concludes:

Given the countries’ different starting points, Australia’s mid-century target of a 60 per cent reduction in emissions from 2000 levels is similar to National’s 50 per cent from 1990 levels. But while Rudd is taking at least baby steps in that direction, Key is performing some kind of pirouette.

It’s an unedifying spectacle.

[Title reference]

Woodman, spare that tree (foresters attitudes to the ETS)

pine.gif As one would expect from a rurally based sector, foresters are a conservative lot. I don’t say that disrespectfully, because societies – for the sake of stability – need a balanced mixture of change-makers and change-resisters. But it did mean that, when in 1989 I started work on Climate Change and forestry, I met with considerable opposition: “what bullshit is this? The climate has ALWAYS changed. Nature is self-balancing.” And so on, you’ve heard it all before.
Continue reading “Woodman, spare that tree (foresters attitudes to the ETS)”