Don't let big business water down the Emissions Trading Scheme

The Government recently released its framework for a New Zealand greenhouse gas Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). The proposed scheme include all sectors and all greenhouse gases, although their entry times into the scheme vary. It puts a price on carbon across the economy, but it does not set a cap on emissions within New Zealand — there is no limit on the extent to which emissions reductions, and emissions offsets, can be purchased overseas.

By itself, the scheme is unlikely to produce major emissions reductions, unless the international price of carbon is substantially higher than projected. It will need a suite of complementary measures to drive real reductions in our emissions profile.

Despite this, the ETS has already come under sustained attack by representatives of the major greenhouse gas emitters, such as heavy industry and agriculture. They want the introduction of the scheme delayed, and its absolute emissions reductions targets replaced by “intensity targets”.

Although the scheme grants them extremely generous free allocations of the right to emit — or, in other words, extremely generous taxpayer subsidies of their emissions — it phases those free allocations out by 2025. The big emitters want their free allocations maintained in perpetuity.

So the ETS needs your help. On its website, the Climate Defence Network, www.climatedefence.org.nz, suggests that you write to the Prime Minister and go to see your nearest Labour MP to tell them that, if the scheme is to have any international or domestic credibility, they have to stand firm against the pressure from the big emitters. You could also ask for the following improvements to the scheme:

1. Urge the government to reconsider the timing of the inclusion of agriculture, and especially the dairy industry, within the trading scheme, and to resist strongly any pressure to further delay the introduction of the different sectors into the scheme.

2. Urge the government to reconsider the time period for phasing out free allocations and to resist strongly any pressure to extend it. Any suggestion that free allocations should be made permanent must be rejected.

3. Urge the government to reconsider adopting a cap on domestic emissions, and to restrict the inclusion of Eastern European ‘hot air’ units and any offset units that cannot satisfy a ‘gold standard’ test of environmental integrity.

4. Urge the government to audit the ETS to ensure that it does not have negative consequences for native ecosystems, and in particular, that credits are not given for non-indigenous forests established on areas of native ecosystems.

See http://www.climatedefence.org.nz/actnow.html#visitmp to find out how to contact and talk with politicians. In this case, given the urgency, it may be worth emailing rather than writing a letter.