Wright: NZ set to miss Paris goals

Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Jan Wright wants climate change targets embedded into law, with ‘‘carbon budgets’’ for expenditure set 12 years ahead of time.

The recommendation is the main thrust of her final report before retirement.

It calls for New Zealand to make much bolder and more specific plans for how to reach our emissions targets.

Wright has no confidence that New Zealand will meet the target it signed up to in Paris, let alone its one for 2050.

‘‘There is no direct link between New Zealand climate policy and reaching the Paris target.

‘‘There has been a lot of debate around what our targets should be. But I’m much more interested in how we are actually going to achieve them.’’

The Paris target, signed up to by the Government in 2015, commits New Zealand to reducing net emissions of harmful gases to 57.7 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year. The target for 2050 is 32.3 million tonnes per year.

Greenhouse gases are the primary cause of human-influenced climate change, which is likely to cause drastic damage to food production, coastlines, and weather in coming decades.

‘‘Climate change is the environmental issue of our time. I feel strongly that we must move to a low-carbon model,’’ Wright said.

‘‘The development of climate policy is distributed across different government agencies, and can be crowded out by other priorities.’’

New Zealand has an emissions trading scheme (ETS) but no cap is set on emissions, and excludes agriculture, which accounts for almost half of our harmful emissions.

Wright points out that New Zealand’s total emissions are climbing, while in many countries they are falling.

One of them is the United Kingdom, which Wright argues we could learn from.

The UK sets its targets for emissions reduction in law, while allowing governments of the day to create their own way of getting there.

As well as far-off targets like the Paris Agreement and a 2050 goal, the law requires the government to set incremental ‘‘carbon budgets’’ 12 years in the future.

‘‘Twelve years is close enough to have an idea about what new technology will make possible but far enough away to give businesses time to plan predictably. What we hear from New Zealand business about climate change is the main thing they want is predictability,’’ Wright said.

The carbon budgets are spread over five-year periods to allow flexibility. So far the UK has met every one.

Wright argues that putting carbon targets into law would ‘‘depoliticise’’ the issue somewhat, taking it from a political football to cross-party co-operative practice. Instead of wild swings in policies between governments there would be a predictable and transparent plan to slowly reduce emissions.

Since 2011 the UK has had lower per-person emissions than New Zealand. Since 1990 their net emissions have decreased by 64 per cent while New Zealand’s have increased by 38 per cent. But Wright admits that every comparison has some flaws.

New Zealand has had higher population growth and our greenhouse gas emissions profile is very different, with vastly more renewable energy generation systems already in place and a far larger reliance on cows.

‘‘But this misses the point. The point is how easily further gains can be made,’’ Wright said.

‘‘We’ve got lots of room to grow trees. We’ve got a bunch of geothermal and wind farms consented and waiting to be built. We shouldn’t just be ‘poor us’, as we are quite well positioned to make changes.’’

Climate Change Minister Paula Bennett said the targets were already ‘‘quite locked in’’ and it wasn’t necessary to lock them in law.

‘‘We are really clear on what those targets are. We have gazetted them. We are heading towards them,’’ Bennett said.

Wright said there was plenty more the Government could be doing.

‘‘Why aren’t the Government purchasing electric cars down to the DHB level? That would help create a second-hand market.’’