Climate Minister Simon Watts has released the Government's three-page strategy. Photo / RNZ
Climate Minister Simon Watts has released the Government's three-page strategy. Photo / RNZ
Opposition MPs have slammed the Government’s climate change strategy, released today, arguing Climate Change Minister Simon Watts has essentially published a “pamphlet” on climate change to disguise the fact most of the Government’s actions have done little to reduce emissions and many will increase emissions.
For comparison, in the years 2026 to 2030 New Zealand’s net annual emissions are meant to be about 61 megatonnes a year.
Officials described this as a “substantial increase in projected emissions”; however, they noted the policy had virtues too.
Reversing the ban and increasing gas use could have some positive climate impacts because using more gas would mean burning less coal, which emits far more. More gas would also mean a more stable electricity market which would encourage electrification. Neither of these positive impacts were modelled, however.
Watts’ strategy laid out a five-pillar approach to tackling climate change: first, to build resilient infrastructure; second, to use credible emissions pricing markets to reduce emissions; third, creating abundant and affordable clean energy; fourth, to use “climate innovation to reduce emissions and boost the economy; and fifth, to make use of “nature-based solutions”.
“Our Government has committed to meeting our climate change targets - reducing net emissions is one of the nine Government targets to achieve better results from the public service,” he said.
Labour’s climate change spokeswoman Megan Woods argued the Government appeared to be getting in ahead of the Climate Change Commission delivering its “monitoring report” – a semi-regular assessment of the Government’s progress towards its multiple climate goals. That report is due to be handed to Watts next week and will be made public no more than 10 days after that.
Woods said the document showed National was only paying “lip service to meeting its climate change targets”.
“If Simon Watts believes his plan is as he has described – comprehensive or ambitious – then New Zealand is in real trouble. This three-page document is flimsy and backward-looking. I can’t help but wonder if the Government is scrambling to get ahead of the Climate Commission’s report card on emission reductions that is due in the coming days,” Woods said.
The Green Party’s climate change spokeswoman Chlöe Swarbrick described the three-page strategy as a “pamphlet” of “pretty pictures” and “some bullet points” that was disconnected from reality.
She noted the irony the Government released the strategy the day the oil and gas ban advice was released.
“Maybe they’ve been embarrassed into releasing this,” Swarbrick said.
The emissions impact of reversing the oil and gas exploration ban. Graph / MBIE
The Government is still finding its feed on the issue of climate change. In opposition, the parties that became the coalition argued for a return to a more simple, Emissions Trading Scheme-led strategy for reducing emissions, which would move away from Labour and the Greens’ approach of sector-specific and consumer-led emissions reduction policies like subsidies for industrial emitters to reduce emissions and subsidies for the purchase of EVs.
“Our Government is committed to restoring credibility in the ETS as it remains the Government’s key tool to reduce emissions,” Watts said soon after taking office.
However, in government, the coalition has struggled to return confidence to the carbon market, with ETS auctions continuing to fail to clear, and the price of NZUs (a unit under the ETS) languishing at close to $52, suggesting market participants continue to have little confidence in the market.
Swarbrick said it was rich of Watts to cite market functioning in the plan, given that the Government had only added to uncertainty around the way the ETS functioned. Watts said earlier this year he was not planning any “major or significant” reforms of the ETS, but was “looking at doing some policy changes in regard to where trees can be planted”.
Changes to land use were signalled in National’s coalition agreement with NZ First.
“They have created uncertainty among the amount of forestry carbon credits, meaning that the ETS auctions continue to keep failing – so they haven’t created certainty for that type of investment,” Swarbrick said.
The Government has until the end of the year to set an Emissions Reduction Plan, which is the main emissions reduction action the Government can take under the Zero Carbon Act. This tends to be a series of emissions reduction measures to help meet the next Carbon Budget, which is set at 305 megatonnes ( an averages 61Mt per year) over the period 2026-2030.
The Government’s third-quarter plan says the draft of this must be released before the end of September. Officials said the Government’s oil and gas exploration ban reversal would load an additional 14.2 million tonnes of emissions into the emissions budgets stretching out to 2035. This will create a headache for the Government as it moves to set its Emissions Reduction Plan.
Thomas Coughlan is Deputy Political Editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.
