There are fewer major climate policy set pieces this year than previously but the election means we're in for a vigorous debate, Marc Daalder reports
Analysis: While the Government delivered its massive Emissions Reduction and Adaptation Plans in 2022, this year is still shaping up to be a big year for climate policy.
Overshadowing everything is the 2023 election, likely to take place in September.
Since National voted to pass the Zero Carbon Act, there's been relatively little serious debate over climate policy in politics. First, Covid-19 pushed every other topic off the agenda. Under Judith Collins, National barely had a climate policy to speak of.
Christopher Luxon has worked to reverse that, but still hasn't got his head around most of the policy details. Gaffes and broad statements won't cut it in 2023, though, when climate will be one of the top issues on the agenda and National will have to front with coherent ideas to counter Labour and the Greens.
Expect to see more robust discussion of the role of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) in our path to net zero, the relative prioritisation of adaptation and mitigation, the fitness of our methane targets and the obligation (financial and otherwise) we owe to the rest of the world for our historic emissions.
That's because, while there are fewer massive set pieces this year than last, there are still a number of smaller items on the agenda.
READ MORE: * An emissions price in name only * NZ’s farmers’ global customers demand more rigorous climate response
First up, the Climate Change Commission will advise by the end of February on what price controls and unit settings in the ETS should be. This will highlight not just the degree to which the ETS can shoulder most or all of the decarbonisation burden, but also how seriously governments should take the commission's advice.
After all, the current Government overrode the commission's last batch of ETS advice at the end of December to artificially hold the carbon price low. Will it do so again?
The commission's bigger moment in the sun, however, will come first in autumn and then again before the end of the year, when it releases its major report on the shape of the next Emissions Reduction Plan. The commission's first report, released as a draft in January 2021 and then as final advice in June of that year, was one of the few climate topics to see earnest debate since the last election.
This one will go out for consultation between April and June and must be presented as a final draft to the Government by the end of December. With only two years between the reports, it's hard to tell how much will be different in this one. The Government has barely had time to launch its first Emissions Reduction Plan and a progress report on that work isn't due from the commission until mid-2024.
On the other hand, the war in Ukraine has dramatically shifted the conversation around fossil fuels and renewable energy and three major reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change offer a new evidence base for consensus on climate science and climate policy.
Commission aside, the most controversial climate issue this year will continue to be the pricing of agricultural greenhouse pollution. It's something the sector has nominally agreed to in 2019, but which it has also fought tooth-and-nail to weaken ever since.
At the end of last year, the Government announced it had further stripped back its own proposal. The pricing scheme is now more of a low-emissions subsidy and research and development programme, coincidentally funded by a levy on farm emissions.
Still, farming groups sense opportunity in a potential National government, which could weaken the mechanism even more or scrap it entirely. They'll resist the Government's work as hard as they can to preserve bargaining room with the next government. They also have to represent their constituents, fewer than half of whom believe farmers should have to reduce emissions at all.
There's also a bit on the international climate agenda which could affect New Zealand. In particular, the Paris Agreement parties (including us) are slated to release a global stocktake of Paris pledges, to inform the next round of commitments. Officials will begin work behind the scenes on our next Paris target, covering 2031-2035.
More importantly at home, we're quickly running out of time to produce a plan to meet our first Paris target, which covers the decade from 2021 to 2030. While domestic emissions reductions will get us about a third of the way to meeting that target, we'll still likely have to pay other countries to reduce emissions by 100 million tonnes over the decade.
That work hasn't started yet and waiting until 2030 could leave whoever's in power with an immense bill of more than $10 billion. Smoothing the purchasing out over the next eight years is important -– and in fact required by the Paris Agreement.
This, of course, is likely to spark further debate over whether our Paris target is too ambitious or not ambitious enough. National initially opposed the updated target under Judith Collins, but Luxon has since said he backs it.
