New Releases 2010

New Zealand should put its emissions trading scheme on hold following Australia’s decision to stop work on its own scheme, the Greenhouse Policy Coalition said today.

The Global Research Alliance is a positive example of how New Zealand should go about tackling carbon emissions, the Greenhouse Policy Coalition’s new Executive Director, David Venables, said today.

While there have been plenty of column inches devoted to picking over the entrails of the failed UN climate change meeting in Copenhagen, there has not much discussion of what it means specifically for New Zealand.

New analysis of country pledges for climate change emission reductions after 2012 shows NZ’s conditional target of 10-20% rates better than many other countries.

The executive director of the Greenhouse Policy Coalition, representing the energy intensive sector on climate change issues, says the proposed changes the government has announced for the emissions trading scheme are a welcome move in the right direction.

The Greenhouse Policy Coalition submission to the government on a 2020 target for emission reductions, warns that if the government settles on a 15% reduction target from 1990 levels, it will cost NZ households ten times what the US is proposing to charge its citizens.

New economic analysis done for the Greenhouse Policy Coalition shows that the emission reduction targets being called for by Greenpeace of a 40% reduction by 2020, would come at a very high cost for every New Zealander, potentially reducing every person’s income by $3,200 by 2020 and doubling the price of energy.

A peer review of the economic analysis undertaken by NZIER and Infometrics for the Select Committee Review of the emissions trading scheme, is critical of the conclusion it reached because the conclusion is not based on the results of the economic modeling.

It is interesting to see that Greenpeace has corralled a group of NZ celebrities to endorse its call for NZ to sign up to an emission reduction target of 40% by 2020 at the next round of climate change negotiations. The list includes Lucy Lawless, Stephen Tindall, Cliff Curtis, Peter Gordon and Jim Salinger.

While targets to aspire to are one thing, international emission reduction commitments will come at a high cost for New Zealanders’ if the target proves to be unrealistic.

The executive director of the Greenhouse Policy Coalition, representing the energy intensive sector on climate change issues, today called on the Select Committee reviewing the emissions trading scheme (ETS) to suspend the introduction of the industrial sector into the scheme, until such time as the flawed legislation has been properly reviewed and fixed.