Tag: ETS

A snake swallows the elephant in the room and then flogs a dead horse – climate change politics in NZ Election 2011

Possible the longest ever title on a Hot Topic post: Simon Johnson continues our series on the NZ election by examining the entrails…

So whats happening with climate change in the election?

Elephant swallowed by the snake
I was originally thinking about writing a wonkish post comparing climate change policies between parties. You know the sort of thing. Which parties have policies that reflect the seriousness of the impacts the science predicts? Who has got the science wrong? Which politicians are all talk and no action? What are the minute details of the each party’s NZETS policies. Such as delays to sector entry dates, partial price obligations and varying free unit allocation regimes in the . MEGO, anyone? (My Eyes Glaze Over….)

Then I thought, Nah! I am looking through the wrong end of the telescope. You know what really strikes me about climate change in the election? It’s the absence. It is as if climate change is nearly completely absent from the campaign. When climate change does pop up, it’s portrayed in simplistic soundbites.

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Australia’s carbon price mechanism in six dot points

Rosemary Lyster, Professor of Climate and Environmental Law at the University of Sydney explains the most important features of Australia’s new emissions law. It’s interesting to compare and contrast the framework with the current ETS legislation in NZ, and what may happen to our framework if National form the next government. [Republished from The Conversation]

Australia’s carbon price mechanism has become law. But how does it work? There are six key points:

1. Australia’s emissions trajectory

By 2020, Australia will reduce all of its greenhouse gas emissions by 5% compared with 2000 levels. By 2050, emissions will be reduced by 80% compared with 2000 levels.

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Three years of “very serious” climate policy failure

A damning review of the climate policy of the current government by three leading academics finds that it has made “little substantive progress” on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, that work on adapting to climate change impacts has been “even more deficient”, and that current policies are likely to be “economically wasteful”. End-of-term review of the New Zealand Government’s response to climate change: a public health perspective by Nick Wilson, Ralph Chapman, and Philippa Howden-Chapman, published in last week’s NZ Medical Journal ((NZMJ 4 November 2011, Vol 124 No 1345, http://journal.nzma.org.nz/journal/124-1345/4949/ (behind a paywall))), looked at five main policy areas — NZ’s contribution to international action, giving carbon price signals to the market, supporting domestic R&D (for example, into renewable energy), supportive regulation and policy development, and supportive infrastructure investment. In each area, the National-led government’s actions were found wanting. Here’s an excerpt from the paper:

In summary, in this last electoral term there appears to have been little substantive progress by the current government on reducing greenhouse gas emissions (via work internationally or domestically), despite government targets (2020 and 2050) requiring material action. Government responses towards adapting to climate change impacts seem to be even more deficient (hardly more than some guidance documents). This lack of attention may be considered to be very serious given the potential size of the climate change threat — to public health and for the whole of society. It can also be considered economically wasteful in that the New Zealand economy is placed at increased risk of having to make a more abrupt and disorderly transition in the future. Also if other nations react to this lack of response by imposing carbon tariffs on New Zealand exports, this could also have serious economic consequences given the economy’s dependence on trade.

Lead author associate professor Nick Wilson of the Department of Public Health at the University of Otago commented:

“Action on climate change needs to be considered as an urgently required form of catastrophe insurance, but we are clearly not seeing this with minimal government action in recent years.”

Full paper available here. See also: Scoop (press release), No Right Turn, TV3News.

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.

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