Tag: ETS

Come together

ANZlogo.jpg Signals are beginning to emerge (from the 5th Australia-New Zealand Climate Change & Business conference in Melbourne this week) that the “harmonisation” of New Zealand’s emission reduction policy framework may take longer than expected (or feared). Following a breakfast with his Australian counterpart Penny Wong, both ministers were reported to be playing up the difficulties of linking the two schemes. The Stuff report quotes Wong:

“The first step for both of our governments is to get our legislation in place, to get our trading schemes in place,” Ms Wong told reporters. “The second point is this — we are doing the work to explore options for harmonisation. There is obviously a lot more work that needs to be done.”

Smith was equally cautious:

“That is why the two governments are in a pretty common space in saying we are going to start these two schemes separately but in time it is our ambition to bring them closer together.”

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that businesses on both sides of the Tasman are urging their governments to get a move on.

“You don’t shift significant billions of dollars of investment on the basis of what’s likely to happen,” said Barry Harris, director of milk supply for Fonterra, the world’s biggest dairy exporter and a pillar of the New Zealand economy. “The financial consequences of reacting to the wrong signals are absolutely massive,” he told the conference.

In NZ, Labour’s climate spokesman Charles Chauvel today warned that softening up the current ETS arrangements to match Australian proposals could cost taxpayers up to $200m a year. But perhaps the most telling statement to emerge this week is this line form Nick Smith’s speech to the Melbourne conference:

It is just unrealistic to continue to pretend we are, or can be, world leaders in reducing emissions.

To some, that may be admirable pragmatism. To me, it demonstrates a catastrophic lack of vision and a failure to rise to a challenge. If Smith wants no part of leadership, he should resign his cabinet post immediately.

[Lennon, J]

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?”

The size of a cow

AtomHeartMother.jpg NZ’s farming leadership remains in denial about the need for action on climate change, as a remarkable speech [full text, Stuff report] by Federated Farmers president Don Nicolson demonstrates. Addressing the Plant Protection Society’s annual conference in Dunedin yesterday, Nicholson took swipes at Keisha Castle-Hughes, Greenpeace and the Green Party:

It’s not the reality that Greenpeace or the Green Party informs people before they ‘sign-on’. There’s no hint of a real solution apart from some ‘great leap backwards’. No, the vision they extol is instead apocalyptic. It is designed to create a climate of fear and don’t the anti-progress agents love fear. A fear of no oil, rising sea levels, extinction and starvation. It’s moral brainwashing without facts or context.

No real solutions on offer? No facts to support calls for action? It looks to me like Nicolson’s the one who’s making stuff up — and leading NZ’s farmers down a commercially disastrous path in the process.

Continue reading “The size of a cow”

No vision, no guts, no future

targetThe New Zealand government announced this afternoon that NZ would table a conditional emissions target of between 10% and 20% cuts on 1990 levels by 2020 [Scoop, Herald]. The range is supposed to allow for a response to the progress of international negotiations, and the conditions are that there should be a comprehensive international agreement that (according to the MoE Q+A):

…sets the world on a pathway to limit temperature rise to not more than 2°C; developed countries make comparable efforts to those of New Zealand; advanced and major emitting developing countries take action fully commensurate with their respective capabilities; there is an effective set of rules for land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF); and there is full recourse to a broad and efficient international carbon market.

Climate minister Nick Smith says that the target will be achieved by a mixture of domestic emission reductions, the storage of carbon in forests, and the purchase of emission reductions from other countries. The MoE Q+A page lists the measures in place to help NZ reduce emissions (#25): it amounts to a watered down emissions trading scheme, a $323 million home insulation and clean heating fund, a new Centre for Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research, incentives for new energy technologies like sustainable biofuels, electric cars and solar water systems, Resource Management Act reforms and a National Policy Statement to support renewable electricity generation. No mention of forestry. Are the trees expected to plant themselves?

The target range comes as no surprise, given the signals emerging from the government over recent weeks, but the modest nature of the target and the fact that it is all conditional puts NZ in a weak position internationally. Smith & Co continue to insist that their targets, based on “50 by 50”, are in line with what the science is telling us, but that is only true if they cherry pick the most optimistic IPCC scenario, and ignore the evidence that’s been emerging over the last two years. This is not mysterious stuff, not news. The science and policy community has told the government the facts — it looks like they have chosen to ignore them and pander to those who would rather do nothing.

It is now transparently obvious that this National-led government simply does not understand the real challenges presented by climate change. They do not appreciate the full seriousness of the situation that confronts the planet, they underestimate the need to act, and they have completely failed to make any coherent assessment of what could be done. That amounts to gross incompetence, and they should be held to account for it, both at the ballot box and in the court of public opinion.

[Pusillanimous]

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]