Don’t rely heavily on pine forests, says Carr

The Government would be imposing a big obligation on future generations if it relied heavily on pine forests to meet the country’s 2050 “net zero” carbon goal, members of Parliament have been told.

Climate Change Commission chairperson Rod Carr told Parliament’s environment select committee “we think trees are great”.

But he said the commission was concerned about what might happen after 2050 if the country had achieved “net zero” by planting a large number of pine trees that might be unsustainable.

“If they are a mono-age, mono-culture of planting, particularly on erosion-prone land, maintaining that forest cover in the face of disease, age, storm, fire is going to be an increasing obligation on future generations.”

Up to 2 million hectares of farmland could be converted to pine forests under existing incentives, which placed no cap on the use of forestry to achieve net emissions targets, he said.

“We recommend that the Government decide what is the acceptable level of gross emissions reduction and, by implication, what is the acceptable level of pine plantation offsets to achieve our existing targets.”

People often forgot the 2050 commitment was to be “net zero” in every subsequent calendar year, Carr told the committee.

That meant that if the country relied too heavily on planting pine trees to achieve that, it would need to commit more and more land to forestry to offset emissions in the latter half of the century, he told the committee.

The Climate Change Commission is due to provide Climate Change Minister Simon Watts with advice on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) on Thursday, including on the floor price for issuing carbon credits and the trigger price for releasing extra credits.

That advice would be made public on March 14, he said.

“The commission believes the ETS can play a significant part in helping New Zealand lower its emissions, but also believes that in its current state, it will fail to do so,” Carr said.

That was partly because there was a significant “overhang” in the market of previouslyissued emissions rights that it was hard to unpack, he said.

ACT party climate change spokesperson Simon Court voiced concern during the committee hearing over the use of child labour in the third world to produce the materials for EV car batteries, questioning “how far should we really cast the net when we're thinking about what's important to New Zealand?”

Carr said it was great there was a live social conscience about child labour, but there was “an element of selective bias sometimes what we choose to inquire about”.

Out of the estimated 6 million child labourers on the planet, about 25,000 were involved in mining cobalt in Congo,” he said, saying also that half of the world’s lithium came from Western Australia.

“So we should all be mindful of where we get our pyjamas and our shoes from as well as where we get our technology from.”

Carr suggested “carbon border adjustments” on certain imports appeared a reasonable way to address a separate concern that any strict emissions policies could result in manufacturers shifting production to countries with fewer protections.

The European Union was evaluating and in some cases putting in place such levies, which were an alternative to New Zealand’s current practice of issuing “free” carbon credits to some firms in heavy industries that faced overseas competition, he said.