Climate change minister James Shaw and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern have welcome the climate change commission report. (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

PoliticsJanuary 31, 2021

New Zealand roadmap to net zero revealed on historic day. Here’s what it means for you

Justin Giovannetti

Contributing writer

Climate change minister James Shaw and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern have welcome the climate change commission report. (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

Ardern says the government is ready to ‘accelerate’ to meet the ambitious demands of the emissions budget laid down by the Climate Change Commission.

Every home and business in the country will need to see a substantial shift in behaviour under far-reaching guidance just released by the Climate Change Commission. The “emissions budget”, the first in Aotearoa’s history, sets out a path to being carbon neutral by 2050. Without “strong and decisive action” within the next few years, the commission warns New Zealand will not meet its domestic or international climate targets.

The package is ambitious but does not depend on any future technology, steep taxes or painful industrial contraction to decarbonise the economy. Consultation on the draft advice is open until March 14, with a final roadmap to be released by the end of May. The government is then legally required to adopt the advice or come up with its own plan before the end of the year.

“The government must pick up the pace. Aotearoa will not meet its targets without strong and decisive action now to drive low emissions technologies and behaviour change across all sectors. 2050 is not far away,” the nonpartisan commission warns in the blueprint, which runs to nearly 200 pages.

“The good news is that our analysis shows there are technically achievable, economically affordable and socially acceptable paths for Aotearoa to take,” said the commission chair Rod Carr. “But the government must move faster – and support business, agriculture and community to do the same.”

Climate Change Commission chair Rod Carr. Photo: Supplied

The prime minister this afternoon welcomed the advice, saying it supported the ambition of carbon neutrality by 2050 as “both achievable and affordable”.

Jacinda Ardern said: “The commission’s draft advice sets out an achievable blueprint for New Zealand to become a prosperous, low-emissions economy … As a government we are committed to picking up the pace and focusing much more on decarbonisation and reducing emissions rather than overly relying on forestry.”

James Shaw, the climate minister who pushed the legislation that created the commission through parliament in the last term, said: “There are two things that stand out from the draft advice – first, that action will be required across all sectors of the economy, and second that meeting our targets is affordable and possible with existing technology.”

He added: “There are a series of choices that will need to be made at a cabinet level about how we reach net-zero carbon emissions and reduce biogenic methane – but when I look at the strategic policy direction the commission has set out, I am more confident than I have ever been that it can be done.”

In a statement, of the Schools Strike for Climate group called the commission report “confronting”. Spokesperson Ethan Reille added: “They have made it very clear that New Zealand is not doing enough, and quite frankly we are on the edge of major backlash, such that chain reactions that are soon to come, will be irreversible – unless action is made, and is made now.”

Here’s how the commission proposes to create a zero carbon New Zealand.

Your car

Most New Zealanders will need to buy electric vehicles by the end of this decade. Government support will probably be required to make purchases affordable. The country will begin phasing-out internal combustion engines after 2030.

Your home

No new natural gas or LPG bottles will be fitted to homes or business after 2025. All gas is removed in the 2040s and replaced with heat pumps or electric water cylinders. New homes by 2035 need to be 35% more energy efficient than today.

Your community

We need to build compact communities where people can walk, bike or use public transit. There will be more remote working as we reduce annual kilometres travelled by 7%.

Transport

Medium and heavy electric trucks will be required by the 2040s. Increasingly, freight is moved to trains, ferries and coastal shipping that are all electrified. More biofuels for aviation.

Power

An end to fossil fuel powered electricity. Replace gas and coal process heat in industry.

Agriculture

Reduce stock numbers of sheep and cows. Require low emissions practices, low emissions breeding and new technology to curb methane. Plant native forests instead of exotic trees being used now to capture carbon quickly.

Waste

Stop binning organics and create a circular economy where goods are reused instead of going to landfill. As the report puts it, a transformation from “a throw away culture to one that values our resources.”

That list isn’t a series of pick and choose recommendations. The commission makes it clear that the country needs to do all of them. At the same time. Starting now.

There are 17 critical actions set out that the government needs to take.

According to the commission, the overall cost of meeting the targets and the proposed emissions reductions is less than 1% of projected GDP—which might sound small but is still a massively expensive programme.

The report compares the needed changes to the 1980s economic reforms that continue to shape the country today. It needs to be a steady transition, fast enough to make a difference, but with enough breathing room to support people through the changes and ensure no single group unfairly shoulders the burden of curbing carbon emissions.

It will be difficult, the commission acknowledges. The transition will take decades and needs to be non-partisan, as 10 elections are planned between now and 2050. “Uncertainty is not a reason to delay,” the commissioners warn. Acting sooner creates more options in the future, delay will only make it harder and more expensive when the time does come to meet carbon neutral targets.

To cushion the economic blow, the commission calls for most transitions to happen when cars, gas fittings or industrial equipment wears out and needs to be replaced. Things shouldn’t be trashed early to speed the move towards a carbon neutral economy. Overall industrial output, as well as milk and meat production, is stable or increases under the emissions budgets.

Up to 1,100 jobs in oil and gas, as well as coal, could be lost by 2035 according to the report’s modelling. “It is worth noting that many of these workers have important skills that will be valuable in other sectors and new industries,” the commission wrote.

There will be a need for the government to help some workers learn new skills. Lower-income and rural communities, who will struggle to reduce emissions cheaply, might also need additional aid during the transition.

As Carr told The Spinoff in an interview last week, choosing the easiest path and ignoring emissions is not an option. He warned that the country could find itself shut out of international markets, its companies boycotted overseas and unable to raise money. As Carr put it, “countries who are putting costs on their local communities are going to get less tolerant of countries and communities that aren’t doing their share.”

While the commission’s goals for New Zealand might sounds far-fetched, they’re increasingly the global minimum. US President Joe Biden signed executive orders this week that committed the country to emissions-free electricity by 2035 and economy-wide carbon neutrality by 2050.

So how realistic is getting to a carbon free Aotearoa by 2050? Very. The commission came up with two scenarios. In it’s pessimistic headwinds scenario, where technologies are delayed and people stubbornly refuse to change behaviours, the target is hit in 2048. With tailwinds, where everything goes well, the target is hit in 2040.

Once the country gets to carbon neutrality, it can pop a bottle of bubbly and celebrate for a day or two. However, the work doesn’t finish there. That’s when undoing the damage already done starts and the country moves into negative net emissions to start scrubbing the atmosphere.

“Actions taken in the next five years will need to set Aotearoa up to deliver the deeper reductions required in subsequent emissions budgets,” wrote the commission.

While the government’s current policies are set to miss the mark, they don’t miss by much. By 2050 the country would be off by 6.3 megatons of warming gases, which is about 16% of current gross annual emissions. The commission’s programmes requires so much more work because it rejects the largest element of the government’s current plan: planting trees.

New Zealand’s main tool right now to combat emissions is planting trees. Working through the country’s carbon trading schemes, millions of trees are forecast to be planted. Most of the planting will be exotic tree species that grow fast and absorb carbon quickly. That’s the wrong way to go, according to the commission.

For starters, it’s a lot of trees. About 1.1 million hectares of new forest is needed. That’s the area of 13 supercities or all of Northland. That’s valuable land turned into trees that don’t do much for the local environment or biodiversity. There’s also a risk, highlighted in the Spinoff, that as the world warms, the trees might stop absorbing carbon and start emitting it, which would be very, very bad.

There needs to be some tree planting according to the commission, but it should be native bush, which grows over centuries and supports local plants and animals.

Finally, planting trees offsets carbon emissions now, but it doesn’t actually prepare the country for the future. There would be no “meaningful decarbonisation” of the economy, instead, it kicks the can down the road, requiring the next generation to tackle emissions. If there’s one thing the commission learned, it’s to stop delaying action and pushing the burden to the next generation.

The climate strike in Auckland in 2019 (Photo: Sylvie Whinray)

Keep going!

Rod Carr in October 2019 (Photo: Phil Walter/Getty Images)

PoliticsJanuary 29, 2021

New Zealand’s most important day yet fighting the climate crisis

Justin Giovannetti

Contributing writer

Rod Carr in October 2019 (Photo: Phil Walter/Getty Images)

The chair of the Climate Change Commission says he should have understood the challenge of the climate crisis sooner, Justin Giovannetti writes.

This article was published in January 2021

New Zealand is an international outcast. Its exports are boycotted around the world. Its leaders shunned.

That’s a future scenario for the country unless climate policies are quickly strengthened, warns the head of the Climate Change Commission.

Rod Carr isn’t a peddler of doom and gloom, but there’s no more delaying the inevitable, the commission’s chair said in an interview with The Spinoff. New Zealand has two options this year, he proposed: face the consequences of being a climate outlier on the global stage or commit itself to the difficult job of rapidly slashing emissions.

The former central banker is days away from what could be New Zealand’s most important day yet in determining its response to the climate crisis. On Sunday, the commission’s first “carbon budget” will be released, complete with a blueprint to meet the country’s domestic and international climate obligations.

The report is likely to shake many in New Zealand who don’t seem to realise how much of a climate laggard the country has become, according to Carr. “Most New Zealanders would be surprised to learn that we are an outlier and not in the good sense in terms of our emissions profile, our current policy and our actions to date,” he said.

While he wouldn’t speak about the specifics of what commission is going to propose, Carr made it clear that 2021 will need to be a wakeup call for the country, from the top floors of the Beehive through to each home and small business. The advice is apolitical, backed by science and technically feasible and affordable, according to the commission.

There are opportunities in the move towards a less climate-intensive economy, Carr believes. Handled well, New Zealand can be wealthier and healthier, avoiding the economic fractures caused by the country’s last bout of economic reinvention under Rogernomics in the 1980s.

“Relative to others like us we are late to this party. It would have been a lot easier for us all if we’d started this 30 years ago. We’ve made it harder as a result of delay,” said Carr, speaking with The Spinoff over the phone from his home in Christchurch.

The former businessman and academic has only chaired the commission for 15 months. With a bushy white beard, he speaks clearly and carefully. He’s a former executive at BNZ, Australia’s NAB and New Zealand’s reserve bank. His doctoral thesis was on risk management and life insurance. His two feet are firmly planted in a world miles away from the rosy optimism that can sometimes be associated with plans like the green new deal.

During a half-hour interview, he admits he didn’t know nearly enough about climate change before entering his current role. If his stark warnings are surprising to you, it was also surprising to him.

“It’s been a challenging 15 months for me because I ask myself, how didn’t I know this before? How did I spend 30 years going about my busy business without necessarily understanding the extent to which the combustion of fossil fuels in the open air and the relatively high emissions from industrial agriculture were causing some significant and compounding issues, not only for New Zealand, but for humanity,” he said.

“I should have known more of this sooner.”

Contrary to the country’s clean and green image, New Zealand is one of the few OECD countries to have increased its overall emissions since 1990. Each individual New Zealander now puts out the third highest amount of climate warming gases among industrialised nations. In part that’s due to an inefficient transportation sector, with lots of used cars and utes, but mostly it reflects an agricultural system that emits enormous amounts of carbon dioxide and methane.

A failure to act just isn’t an option in this decade. In recent years, banks and pension funds have begun pulling massive amounts of money away from oil and gas companies. The move has been in response to investor demand and shrewd economics, an admission from money managers that carbon-intensive businesses face uncertain futures. A similar fate could await New Zealand’s agriculture-heavy economy, said Carr.

“Unless New Zealand gets its act together, there is a risk that we begin to see restrictions on our access to markets and our access to forums we’d normally expect to have access to. The world is going to reward countries that get it, and act on the knowledge,” he said.

“Increasingly, countries who are putting costs on their local communities are going to get less tolerant of countries and communities that aren’t doing their share.”

The clock is ticking this year. With November’s COP26 UN climate conference in Glasgow, the country will need to stand up in public and reaffirm the commitment to meet its goals or why it won’t.

The climate change commission, established under the Zero Carbon Act, has created Sunday’s carbon budget to set a path for the government to meet its targets, which are a 10% reduction in methane emissions by 2030 and then a methane reduction of up to 47% by 2050. All other emissions must be net zero by 2050.

If the country is willing, there are some advantages to coming late. Some proven technologies, including wind and solar power, are cheaper than they were a decade ago. The commission itself is based on similar work by the UK government. Finally, while the government has been slow to respond, big business and local government has shown some urgency according to Carr, as they’ve begun to see the need to adapt and scale of risk from a changing climate.

“We have to have a thriving society that is climate-resilient and low-emissions in the future. That’s our vision,” he said.

New Zealand’s legislation is ambitious and this is one of the few countries that has set itself a net zero target. However, there’s been very little of a society-wide push, either in legislation or through government action, to achieve that goal. The commission’s emissions budgets will set a path, with a plan to restrict emissions over three five-year plans until 2035.

After the report’s release on Sunday, there will be a six week period of public consultation. Final advice will be provided by the end of May. The government won’t need to accept the commission’s recommendations, but if it doesn’t, it’s legally required to unveil its own plan by the end of this year.

At an announcement yesterday on new requirements for lower emission biofuels and imported cars, prime minister Jacinda Ardern said she expects the commission’s report will push her government much further.

“The commission’s advice is likely to ask a lot of all of us and require action in all sectors. Today’s announcement is a good step towards what needs to be done,” she said.