Govt sets emissions deadline

way trade policy is. This is to give certainty to the farmers, investors in the sector and the economy overall.

A senior Government source said Ardern was not wedded to the ETS as the mechanism to lower emissions. ‘‘The overall objective is to drive down emissions,’’ the source said.

One industry source close to the decision told Stuff political consensus was crucial.

‘‘We can’t keep jumping from one end to the other on this stuff. This is beyond politics now. This is really the consumer talking,’’ they said.

‘‘I would like to think that if you’ve got the sector and the Coalition Government working together on this, the opposition might be aligned as well.

‘‘That would certainly be our hope because we would like this to be across governments if we could. The political reality may be somewhat different.’’

Agriculture accounts for about half of all New Zealand’s carbon emissions. One reason given to

Stuff for the timeline is to allow the sector to adjust and develop with the Government a comprehensive measuring and accounting regime.

The Government’s plan rejects an earlier recommendation from the Interim Climate Change Committee to start pricing agriculture from as soon as next year.

Sector sources say the plan gives farmers a direct and healthy incentive to work out their own farm-level pricing system for emissions and not incur the backstop. The ETS backstop is still unpopular with farmers, with the sector source close to negotiations saying the Government and sector had ‘‘agreed to disagree’’ on the matter.

The source also said the sector was determined to reduce emissions quickly enough to make the backstop irrelevant.

The Government source said the sector would naturally oppose the backstop, but both sides were confident it would not be needed.

‘‘We think they will work out a scheme by 2025. There needs to be a measure in case they don’t.’’

The sector has already committed to measuring all emissions at a farm-level by 2022.

Thanks to the coalition agreement with NZ First, emission pricing will still be discounted by 95 per cent initially.

Stuff understands all major sector groups, including Federated Farmers, have agreed to the plan.