Analysis:\u00a0The chickens are coming home to roost.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the clear message from this morning\u2019s progress check from the independent Climate Change Commission on NZ\u2019s progress against its emissions targets \u2013 even if it uses many more words, and none quite so explicit, to say so.<\/p>\n
In the past year, the chance of hitting our climate targets has shrunk, not grown. While a handful of policies have been announced which could bring down emissions, \u201creductions from these measures are expected to be relatively small compared to other actions that may increase emissions\u201d.<\/p>\n
Climate-friendly policies include extending road user charge exemptions for electric trucks and introducing congestion charging. On the other side of the spectrum, the Govt has committed to an LNG import terminal, ruled out pricing agricultural emissions and prepared to remove vehicle emissions standards.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not hard to see why the climate plan is looking increasingly off-track.<\/p>\n
Indeed, of the emissions reductions the Government intends to achieve by the end of the decade, just 18 percent face no significant risks. The majority now face significant risk, up from moderate risk in last year\u2019s monitoring report.<\/p>\n
Looking to the carbon budget after that, from 2031 to 2035, and less than 2 percent of the proposed reductions are on track. Even worse, if 100 percent of those planned reductions were on track, NZ would still miss the 2035 target by a mile.<\/p>\n
The Climate Commission uses a colour-coded rubric\u00a0to check the Government\u2019s climate homework. Green is no risk, yellow means moderate, orange is significant and red says policy settings are \u201cinsufficient to deliver\u201d the claimed reductions.<\/p>\n
Where last year\u2019s report card was a grid of orange and yellow, this year\u2019s is nearly all orange. Then there\u2019s the flashing red light for climate pollution from agriculture, where policy is insufficient to deliver because of last year\u2019s changes to methane targets and pricing plans.<\/p>\n
In 2024, the commission reports, emissions stopped decreasing. A jump in electricity emissions due to coal burning in the dry year was offset by a reduction in pollution from industry. Crucially, however, \u201creductions in industrial emissions are largely due to a drop in production, rather than changes in efficiency, technology or fuel switching\u201d. In other words, this is anything but a managed transition.<\/p>\n
To meet NZ\u2019s targets, emissions must actually reduce twice as fast as they did from 2022 to 2025, the commission says. Strip out the Government\u2019s rosy assumptions that the private sector will come to its rescue and slash agricultural emissions without a steer from policy, and NZ may no longer be on track to hit the 2050 emissions target either.<\/p>\n
All is not lost. There is still time to turn the ship around \u2013 though the longer we wait, the more costly it will be and the fewer options we will have.<\/p>\n
Already, if the Government wants to shore up progress against the current emissions budget (running from the start of this year to the end of 2030), it cannot rely on trees to do so. A tree planted today won\u2019t have grown enough in four years to sequester more carbon than its planting stirred up from the soil.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe time available to correct course is now short. Many emissions reductions depend on decisions made well before the reductions are realised, and some options for the [current] emissions budget are no longer available,\u201d the commission says.<\/p>\n
This time last year, the commission advised the Government to work rapidly to ensure its climate plans were fit for purpose. In response, Climate Minister Simon Watts said he\u2019d keep an eye on it, but promised no specific action.<\/p>\n
Now, the commission\u2019s language is even more urgent.<\/p>\n
For example, it says the Government must act in the next 12 months to ensure it meets its targets. It should \u201cimmediately scale up support measures to meet the 2030 biogenic methane target\u201d and start working now to avert a collapse of the carbon market in the 2030s.<\/p>\n
How Watts will receive this year\u2019s recommendations is unclear. The political environment is even more hostile to climate policy than before, as the parties of the coalition race to outdo one another in announcing emissions-regressive policy. On the other hand, the risks to actually hitting our targets are growing larger by the day.<\/p>\n
What might have been dismissed in years past as an over-abundance of caution on the commission\u2019s part has been borne out as the country\u2019s emissions progress\u00a0flatlines and projections of future pollution begin to inch upwards. Even the Government\u2019s own upbeat projections show NZ failing to achieve the 2030 methane target and the next carbon budget.<\/p>\n
The political dilemma presented in this morning\u2019s report will be a headache for Watts. His best hope is the same as most of his predecessors\u2019 \u2013 that he\u2019ll be promoted and someone else will be left with the unenviable job of tending to the roosting chickens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Analysis:\u00a0The chickens are coming home to roost. That\u2019s the clear message from this morning\u2019s progress check from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":["post-538300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}