New Zealand’s climate obligations and National’s climate policy

Written By: - Date published: 6:05 am, October 7th, 2023 - 18 comments
Categories: climate change - Tags: , , ,

Cindy Baxter is a long time climate campaigner, a member of the Coal Action Network Aotearoa organising group and a communications consultant, working on climate change for over 30 years. 

While Simon Louisson did a great job of highlighting that National’s climate policy is a distinctively lesser being than that of the current government, he tripped up on some of the fundamentals, reflected in both the headline, “National set to renege on Paris Agreement” and the detail.

What is an NDC?

First, the Paris Agreement’s “Nationally Determined Contributions” (or NDCs) are not financial contributions, they’re our emission reduction targets, the ones we committed to and submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as part of our obligations under the Agreement, indeed signed by National in 2015 (and ratified in 2016). 

[Fun fact: where did this weird terminology come from? Why not just call it a target? The name was proposed by India in the negotiations for the Paris Agreement, because it didn’t want to sign up to any notion of a “commitment”, a “target, nor even an “emissions reduction”. It wanted nothing that might indicate it was agreeing to be told what to do by anybody else, especially the rich nations.  Hence the “nationally determined” bit.] 

What’s our NDC and how are we going to meet it?

New Zealand’s 2030 target (NDC), an updated version of which the government submitted to the UNFCCC in 2021, commits us to a 50% reduction in gross emissions by 2030.  (Through an accounting trick, this actually translates to a 21% reduction in real terms, that detail’s for another day).

We are not set to meet this target through reducing emissions at home, nor through planting trees: the target is simply too big. Without some kind of  miracle or an overnight country-wide switch to electric vehicles or something, we’re set to miss our target by about 100 million tonnes. 

So the government’s agreed way to meet the target involves a plan to buy international offsets. 100 million tonnes (Mt) of them. We pay other people in other countries to plant trees or build windfarms and therefore reduce emissions.   

No other country plans to meet this sized chunk of its target through paying for international offsets (the EU has a strict limit, for example). This is such a bad look for our country. We get marked down for it. 

How much will buying 100 million tonnes of international offsets cost?

Buried on page 87 of this Treasury document you’ll find the answer.  Up to around $24 billion. 

THIS is the cost that National’s Simon Watts says a National government won’t stump up for. It feels like an enormous sum to be paying for international offset schemes to get others to do the emission reductions for us to meet our target. 

We also need to watch out for which offset scheme we’d pay into, given the increasing number of investigations showing how they don’t offset at all. 

Isn’t cutting emissions at home better than this?

Yes! James Shaw argues, rightfully, that the more we reduce our emissions at home, the less we’ll have to pay for these international offsets (whose price may go through the roof).  

And this is why the government has embarked on a huge programme to cut emissions, and has bent the curve, for the first time in our history. Emissions have dropped for the past three years. But we clearly need to do a lot more.

So what happens if we don’t pay for offsets to meet our target, like National says it won’t?

It’s clear that without these offsets, we would not meet our 2030 target.  So this would mean National reneging on our Paris Agreement pledge.  BUT we do not get financially penalised for this.  We’d just be back to being an international pariah.  

It could be argued that our offsets target already puts us there, but let’s be really clear here: National plans to cut a lot of the programmes that have led to the successful drop in emissions under Labour. 

While we also don’t like this ridiculous offshore thing, that doesn’t mean National is better. 

To vote for the climate, check out these two scorecards:

Vote for Climate

Election Scorecards

18 comments on “New Zealand’s climate obligations and National’s climate policy ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Ngungukai 1
    7 October 2023 at 8:29 am

    That's a really positive/progressive approach by the Nat's ???

    • weka 1.1
      7 October 2023 at 8:39 am

      From the post,

      National plans to cut a lot of the programmes that have led to the successful drop in emissions under Labour.

      it’s a climate denial position. It means we would be going in the opposite direction of where everyone needs to go globally to prevent climate collapse.

      And we’d be an international pariah because National had reneged on one of our most important international agreements. I doubt that as the crisis deepens that would be consequence free.

      • Barfly 1.1.1
        7 October 2023 at 10:26 am

        "I doubt that as the crisis deepens that would be consequence free."

        IMO – If New Zealand pulls that sort of stunt you cxan bend over and kiss goodbye to trade with the EU.

        • Belladonna 1.1.1.1
          7 October 2023 at 10:37 am

          Maybe…..

          It certainly could use this as an excuse – since the EU member countries are always looking for a reason to halt trade with NZ in an attempt to protect their local producers.

          But individual EU countries are also pushing back on climate targets – following recent government changes. If the EU are prepared to let Italy, for example, get away with it – then why not NZ?

          https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/resistance-green-policies-around-europe-2023-08-10/

          • weka 1.1.1.1.1
            7 October 2023 at 10:45 am

            risky strategy for NZ. If the EU strengthens its climate action and NZ reneges, what will trade look like in 10 or 15 years? Have you seen how Europe is treating the UK since Brexit?

            And let's play this out. If the position is 'we don't have to because some of these other countries don't' and lots of the smaller countries follow suit, we are basically saying fuck the future, let's look after ourselves now. I don't understand how people with children and grandchildren in particular manage that psychologically.

            Other than that, it's just climate denial (it's not really that bad, later generations will find a way through, we can suck carbon out of the atmosphere with new tech that we haven't invented yet).

            • Belladonna 1.1.1.1.1.1
              7 October 2023 at 10:55 am

              I'm not arguing that it's a good strategy. Just commenting that automatically assuming that NZ will be an international pariah is not necessarily justified.

              ATM – I don't see that individual countries within the EU are on track to strengthen climate action (politically, it's looking less and less likely).

              The EU itself is a different story – it's a monolithic bureaucracy. And, as such, much less susceptible to political influence. How that would work, with the individual members not complying with EU directives – who knows?

              • weka …
                7 October 2023 at 12:52 pm

                I think a couple of things have been conflated here. Cindy said,

                We’d just be back to being an international pariah.

                My understanding is we've already been a pariah in climate circles because of our approach, including that we've kept ag out of the ETS.

                Separate to that history, is the idea that in the future, our trading partners will look badly on us for basically being selfish idiots. Your ideas seem based in the next few years. I was pointing out the longer term issues.

              • Cindy …
                10 October 2023 at 4:34 pm

                New Zealand was an international pariah for the entire nine years of the last National government. That's what we'd be back to. New Zealand always gets "fossil of the day" awards at COP – we haven't behaved at all well on the international climate stage.
                The Zero Carbon Act did change that, as have the new climate policies introduced by the Labour/Green government. But we still have a long way to go.
                With regards to the EU, there's been so much rubbish spouted in Aotearoa in terms of the EU. But it's absolute light years ahead of us, at a country and a regional level.

            • Drowsy M. Kram 1.1.1.1.1.2
              7 October 2023 at 12:01 pm

              Nice comment weka – spot on, imho.

              Nats are myopically focused on getting 'our' housing market back on track, and their unstated methane emissions 'strategy' is 'higher for longer'. They’ve vowed to go back to the drawing board on policy, and Luxon is apparently "sick of inactions" – "It's a case of slower to go faster."

              Get New Zealand Methane Emissions Back on Track

              https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0309/S00040/images-farmers-fart-tax-protest-at-parliament.htm “Images from the National Party media unit.”

              The Nats have a proud history of protesting efforts to reduce methane emissions – if that's changing (and it's a big 'if') then "it's a case of slower".

              And ACT is proud of being the only party to oppose the Zero Carbon Act.

              Climate change: How is my country doing on tackling it?
              Every year countries pledge to cut their greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to curb the impacts of climate change.

              But still global temperatures keep rising.

              So which countries are on track with their climate commitments to help stick to 1.5°C and which are not? Find out using the interactive chart below.

              • georgecom …
                8 October 2023 at 12:36 pm

                20 years of denial and inaction. that picture goes back to the mid 2000's. Still got deniers in their cabinet. For all Luxons talk about CC being real, no sense of urgency. If there was, agriculture emissions would be paying a price in 18 months time

          • Cindy 1.1.1.1.2
            10 October 2023 at 4:27 pm

            The EU is already on track to meet its target 55% reductions below 1990 levels. And the vast majority of those are actual reductions, not treeplanting schemes. Check out this enormous list of regulations and policies already in place – it's pretty impressive.

            (New Zealand's target is below 2005 levels, let's not forget that – our target translates into 21% below 1990).

            Sure, there's some pushback from member states, but the EU is LIGHT YEARS ahead of Aotearoa on climate action. That's because we've done little except plant trees (and fight over all other policies) for the past 30 years. We're embarrassing.

  2. PsyclingLeft.Always 2
    7 October 2023 at 8:50 am

    There is nothing as certain that a NActFrst govt..will set NZ's Climate struggle backwards.

    All the Nats Environmental talk (blue Green ?!) is IMO faux anyway, and.. will be shown for what it is.

    ACT…. dont even pretend. They are clearly Climate Deniers.

    And of course Winston Peters First…is basing his future on Denial.

    The Left are the only hope for NZ… and our Planets Climate Future.

  3. AB 3
    7 October 2023 at 9:46 am

    If I understand it right then: we do not get financially penalised for reneging on our Paris climate pledge, but in fact we avoid the cost of buying international offsets by doing so?

    Nothing could be better designed than that to ensure lots of countries renege. NACT will do it in a heartbeat. I imagine other countries who (like NZ) have been laggard in tackling domestic emissions, will do likewise. The failure of international cooperation and the attempted free-riding by countries like NZ isn't a cause for optimism.

    It feels like free-riding comes very naturally to all of us now as a sort of default economic behaviour. We can be successful by externalising costs onto taxpayers or the environment (future people not born yet), or economically weak people who are price takers.

    • Cindy 3.1
      10 October 2023 at 4:21 pm

      NO OTHER COUNTRY has a target that includes such a huge proportion of international offsets. New Zealand has far and away the most in the OECD. There's simply not "lots of other countries" who'd be doing this. Most have limits on how much can be offset internationally. For example the EU has a tiny limit of 225 MtCO2e TOTAL sinks (that's both international and at home). And let's be clear: I'm not talking about our ridiculous pine plantation offsets at home. this is ONLY international

      Switzerland is planning to but some offsets internationally, but not to the same extent as us. Japan is as well, but while Japan's 100Mt of international offsets is the same size as ours – but Japan's in the top ten global emitters, so the proportion is TINY compared with ours.

      So no other country is in the same position as us. We are an outlier on this.

  4. Dennis Frank 4
    7 October 2023 at 10:13 am

    So the government’s agreed way to meet the target involves a plan to buy international offsets.

    Didn't really inform the public of that, did they? Their reasoning, I mean. If it works, the govt looks like it backed a winner. How can we tell if it works??

    Ask James I guess. So has any journo done that? You know, as if credibility on climate change policy actually matters.

    • Barfly 4.1
      7 October 2023 at 10:34 am

      Well DF I can think of some international offsets we could pay for which would have large benefits and earn a big interenational thumbs up yes

      Financing and project managing the installation of solar plus battery plants in the Pacific. Nations already well disposed to us would be extremely happy – flattens their energy generation costs, frees them from reliance on diesel imports for power generation and is a win for the world's environment.

      • Dennis Frank 4.1.1
        7 October 2023 at 11:01 am

        I agree that Green enterprise is a good idea – too bad the left usually defaults it into the hands of the right (bluegreens), but that may change. Hope it does.

  5. Mike the Lefty 5
    7 October 2023 at 3:07 pm

    National (and of course ACT too) are essentially saying that it is ONLY about climate change and therefore not meeting your obligations isn't important. Betrays National's wishy washy attitude towards it and ACT's refusal to take it seriously.

    But perhaps they don't care about how the EU will react because their hopes are directed in another direction – towards China, and China cares about carbon emissions only when it suits them.

The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.