Tag: Carbon News

Carbon News 13/10/14: foresters in firing line

Anxious foresters await review of foreign credits ban

A controversial decision to make foresters the only emitters banned from using cheap foreign carbon credits to offset their greenhouse gas emissions is under review. The provision was slipped through without warning as part of the Government’s Budget in May, and came into effect immediately.

Business poser: are you creating value, or destroying it?

New Zealand is leading the world on integrated reporting but our business leaders are still not taking it seriously enough, latest data shows.

Beehive stays silent on emissions target

The Government remains mum on New Zealand’s 2030 emissions reduction target. New Zealand did not make any mention of its 2030 target at last month’s Climate Summit in New York, at which United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon asked world leaders to give an indication of the commitments they would make at international climate change negotiations in Paris in December.

New Zealand is drying out … and here’s why

Over 2012 and 2013, parts of New Zealand experienced their worst drought in nearly 70 years. Continue reading “Carbon News 13/10/14: foresters in firing line”

Carbon News 29/9/14: Key challenged over climate impacts on Pacific islands

Memo John Key: look Pacific Island leaders in the eye

The Government is being challenged to invite the leaders of the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Kiribati to come and tell Parliament what they think of New Zealand’s climate change policies. Support to help Small Island Developing States move to renewable energy is one of five measures New Zealand outlined to last week’s United Nations Climate Change Summit in New York. New Zealand said that it will support the Small Island Developing States Lighthouses Initiative in addition to the $100 million it is already investing in clean energy in the Pacific.

Renewables make mark on emissions figures

Increasing generation from renewables is continuing to drive a massive drop in greenhouse gas emissions from electricity in New Zealand. For the second quarter in a row, emissions from electricity in the three months to August were down on the same period last year, latest government figures show.

New York talked the talk, but we’ll have to wait and see who heard

At the end of his summit meeting on the climate crisis, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon put out a list of accomplishments festooned with 46 bullet points, some of them marking concrete new pledges, others diaphanous phrases.

MIA … but it doesn’t mean China’s not interested

There were a few notable absentees among the more than 120 world leaders gathered in New York for last week’s United Nations Climate Summit — and perhaps most notable of all was the head of the world’s highest-emitting nation, China’s President Xi Jinping.

Do something, big business warns political leaders

Many of the biggest hitters in the global financial community, together managing an eye-watering $24 trillion of investment funds, have issued a powerful warning to political leaders about the risks of failing to establish clear policy on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Continue reading “Carbon News 29/9/14: Key challenged over climate impacts on Pacific islands”

Carbon News headlines 22/9/14: If the PM doesn’t worry about climate change, why should we?

Welcome to a new regular feature on Hot Topic: the week’s Carbon News headlines, brought to you every Monday. Carbon News is an NZ-published web newsletter covering climate and carbon news from around the world, published and edited by experienced journalist Adelia Hallett. The full articles are behind the Carbon News paywall. Click on any headline to be taken to that story on the site.

Carbon News has kindly agreed to offer Hot Topic readers personal (ie single user) subscriptions to their news service — and full access to the CN database of over 7,500 stories published since 2008 — at a substantial discount to normal pricing. Three month subs are $110 (code HT3), six month subs $200 (code HT6), and full year subs $360 (code HT12) – a saving of $140 on standard pricing. If you want to take advantage of these prices, register at Carbon News and enter the relevant code when signing up. This offer will expire at the end of the year.

Scientists plead for cuts to ballooning fossil fuel emissions

Scientists are calling for rapid cuts in the use of fossil fuels in the wake of data out today showing we have almost used up our fossil-fuel credit. Greenhouse gas emissions this year will hit a new high of 40 billion tonnes in what the Global Carbon Project is calling a carbon budget blow-out.

Political parties fail to get the sustainability message through

New Zealanders’ support for a shift to a sustainable economy is growing, according to new research from Colmar Brunton. The fact they didn’t vote that way in Saturday’s general election is probably more to do with campaign messages failing to get enough airtime with all the other ‘dirty politics’ noise than it is to do with interest in environmental issues, says the research company’s chief executive Jaqueline Ireland.

If the PM doesn’t worry about climate change, why should we?

New Zealanders are taking their cue on climate change from the Prime Minister, says social trends researcher Jill Caldwell. “They think that John Key is successful and smart, and that if there was really anything to worry about he’d be worried,” she told Carbon News.

Big business signs up with sustainability driver

Some of New Zealand’s largest companies and organisations have signed up to a new international movement on sustainable business.

Why Kiwibank took its business to the kids

When Kiwibank wanted to know how to move beyond the first stage of being a sustainable business, it asked a bunch of 10-year-olds.

We’re spending millions, say green-wise farmers

Manawatu-Whanganui region farmers have spent an average $110,000 each over the past five years on measures to protect the environment, according to a Federated Farmers survey.

Growth and greening now go together, says Stern study

Governments and businesses can now improve economic growth and reduce their carbon emissions together, says a major new report by a commission of global leaders.

… but critic says report fails to back up core message

A new report called Better Growth, Better Climate draws the seductive conclusion that “we can create lasting economic growth while also tackling the immense risks of climate change”. Continue reading “Carbon News headlines 22/9/14: If the PM doesn’t worry about climate change, why should we?”

Why did Nick Smith hide the facts on forestry?

targetGovernment ministers have deliberately played down the role of forestry in meeting emissions targets, documents released under the Official Information Act suggest. Diligent digging at No Right Turn has uncovered a Ministry of Agriculture & Forestry paper [PDF] titled New forest planting and harvesting intentions under high carbon prices, which makes clear that forest planting will increase significantly under a stable Emissions Trading Scheme, and that even a modest ($20/tonne) carbon price could trigger planting of up to 100,000 hectares a year — a rate not seen since the forestry boom of the 1990s, and enough to offset a huge chunk of NZ’s emissions to 2020 and beyond. Climate change minister Nick Smith did not mention these figures during the target consultation process, though it is clear he must have known about them. His failure to front with the facts on forestry amounts to a clear attempt to manipulate public perception of the difficulty of meeting steep targets, and raises serious questions about the agenda driving government policy.

Continue reading “Why did Nick Smith hide the facts on forestry?”

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”