Opportunity wants to explore an emissions cap-and-trade scheme for methane and will commit $5 billion to climate adaptation, it says.
The party has released its full climate policy ahead of the 2026 general election, saying it is time to restore the cross-party consensus that led to New Zealand’s zero carbon laws.
Its pledges include a $1 billion transition fund for industrial gas and coal users, and a $5 billion climate resilience fund to strengthen transport, energy and water networks against extreme weather.
Similar funds existed under the previous government but were scrapped by the National-led coalition, which says it is still funding climate resilience through transport and other budgets, rather than an earmarked fund.
The resilience fund would tag $500 million for “nature-based solutions” like restoring wetlands, while community groups and marae would also receive some of the funding for local projects.
The party said it would also introduce tax write-offs for home and business energy improvements like EVs, batteries and rooftop solar.
It confirmed its support for low-interest green loans administered by local councils – a policy proposed by Local Government New Zealand that has also been adopted by National, Labour and the Greens.
Opportunity leader Qiulae Wong said the party rejected the “false choice between cutting emissions and keeping the lights on”.
“A low-carbon future isn’t about doing without,” she said.
“It’s about making our homes cheaper to run, our businesses more resilient, and our country immune to volatile global fossil fuel prices.”
The Zero Carbon Act – which passed in 2019 with near-universal parliamentary support – had provided businesses and communities with long-term certainty.
“We lost that certainty when the Coalition gutted the Act last year,” Wong said.
New Zealand’s agriculture industry produces large amounts of methane.
RNZ/Alexander Robertson
The current Government has made multiple changes to the law without cross-party consensus, including weakening the targets for methane emissions and no longer requiring domestic climate policy to align with New Zealand’s Paris Agreement pledges.
The coalition also ruled out any future methane tax last year.
Nearly half of New Zealand’s total emissions come from agricultural methane – a short-lived but potent greenhouse gas that farming lobby groups argue should be treated differently to long-lived emissions like carbon dioxide.
Labour has also recently ruled out a methane tax, saying it would instead encourage farmers to adopt methane-busting technologies that are being developed in New Zealand and overseas.
Opportunity said it wanted to back farmers to cut their emissions through technology, but would explore a “cap-and-trade market or levy structure” to reduce biogenic methane emissions.
Asked whether that would entail a tax or levy on farmers and other producers of methane emissions, an Opportunity spokesperson said the design of such a scheme was “complicated and would need to be worked through”.
However, it would likely include some “fair allocations to existing methane emitters”.
Other likely characteristics included preventing emitters from saving their credits to use in future years, or trading them across to carbon credits or on a secondary market, the spokesperson said.
Climate spokesperson Kayla Kingdon-Bebb said the party was “deliberately open-minded about the design”.
“Getting the incentives right for farmers and the wider food and fibre sector is critical,” she said.
“We want to work through those questions with climate and agricultural experts, farmers, processors and industry rather than imposing a model before the evidence is clear.”
The party is also proposing changes to the existing emissions trading scheme, to prioritise cutting emissions at their source rather than offsetting them through forestry.
A recent Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment report concluded the scheme was “rudderless” and was incapable of driving down emissions without wholesale changes.