NZBCSD suggest 20% target
July 29th, 2009 at 2:59 pm by David FarrarThe NZ Business Council for Sustainable Development has promoted an ambitious but not impossible target:
They propose a 20% reduction in gross emissions unilaterally. That is gross not net. Means planting trees won’t do it. As we are currently at 123% of 1990 levels it means a cut by around one third in just a decade.
They say this could go up to 30% if the following conditions are met:
- Competitors of our trade-exposed, emission-intensive industries are exposed to a price on carbon (vital)
- There is overwhelming participation by developed countries in taking responsibility for 25 – 40% reductions in emissions by 2020 from a 1990 base
- Major developing economies, including China and India, agree to significant reductions in the growth of their emissions below BAU (and they have to be significant, or it is all pissing into the wind)
- The rules for forestry and soil carbon be amended to recognise that equivalent replanting can occur for pre-1990 forests in locations other than the site of the felled forest (also very important and sensible)
I think this is at the upper end of what Government thinks is achievable, let alone affordable. As I said it would be very ambitious to cut gross emissions by a third in a decade.
Related posts:
- Fallow on 2020 target
- What should be NZ’s 2020 emissions target
- Treasury on emissions target
- Obama’s emissions target
July 29th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
NZBCSD has been captured by a small group on this issue. Any business watching their costs will have exited NZBCSD some time ago.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Hope this is related enough, DPF – your mention of planting trees reminded me.
Is there an argument for no longer recycling paper?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but if you recycle paper to save trees, you’re losing an incentive to grow more trees. Dumping paper in landfills is by definition a carbon sink, right? Grow fast-growing trees, turn them into paper, use them and dump them.
As long as you don’t burn them, the carbon goes in the ground.
Someone tell me I’m wrong.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Well it will tend to rot in the ground and so something will be emitted. Making paper and board from recycled paper uses less energy than making virgin as well.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
You’re wrong, Ryan.
Just thought I’d tell you.
(Don’t know if I’m right, of course)
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
NZBCSD represents neither business nor science. It is simply an environmental lobby group following up Greenpeace with a fallback position.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
If the decomposition rate of the paper in the landfills is very slow, then the paper will act as a sink for a time (assuming the trees are replaced). But there are all sorts of things to take into account (energy use, transport costs etc).
Using more wood in construction, furniture etc, will also tend to lockup carbon for lengthy periods.
The trick really however, is to get reforestation going. One of the major contributors to GHG emissions has been the loss of forests in many tropical regions (e.g. when Indonesia burnt down forests to plant rice in the mid-1990s, not only did the air quality drop in Singapore, you got a major jump in emissions. Wet-culture rice is a heavy emitter of GHG).
It’s sometimes useful to point out these conversions were not particularly economic, but were also an unfortunate consequence of a lot of perverse incentives. One policy issue that tends to be shied away from, is simply that a lot of governments are badly mismanaging their forests- to the degree that deforestation is being handsomely subsidised.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Pissing into the wind may seem futile but carrying on farting with the wind is worse.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Why are we sacrificing the NZ economy at the altar of GW, while countries such as India, China and Brazil refuse to reduce their emissions? It will wreck our economy beyond belief.
And the spineless National government will do this? You can count on it.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
@ Manolo ignorinig the issue of whether reducing emissions is somethinig anyone needs to do, if you do buy into it, why should countries who are trying to lift the standard of living of their people to western levels have to stop, just so we can stay where we are? There’s only one planet, and only one human race.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Anybody else find it arrogant and thoroughly distasteful to see groups like NZBCSD come out with plans for a whole bunch of people they don’t know and who don’t know them that will have the effect of substantially lowering living standards for everybody in the country by raising energy costs, raising food costs, and raising taxes?
Regardless of your position on the science, I don’t think it is controversial to say that the payback for this massive sacrifice by New Zealanders in terms of effect on global climate will be indistinguishable from zero.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Ryan, not sure about what the treaties and regs say, but in reality, a proportion of the carbon is released as carbon dioxide from the paper decomposing in the land fill. The exact amount depends on the oxygen penetration into the landfill. You’d then get a proportion of that “sequestered” in the soil rather than released into the atmosphere. You would get some benefit, just not as much as originally thought.
There is also an arguement for burning the waste paper to generate power. This would reduce the amount of coal that you dig out of the ground and burn, and therefore leave the “already sinked carbon” intact.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Ryan – and if there’s less incentive to use the land to plant trees, there’s more relative incentive to use it to graze cattle (carbon positive).
Even if you burn the paper, if it’s being replaced from the same acreage, it’s carbon neutral.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
@ paradigm waste paper is worth way too much to burn to generate power, better to burn wood.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
At least, between us, one of us is right. That’s a 50% hit rate. Booyah.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Thanks for your responses, all.
Decomposition, transport, etc. Fair enough. It was a slightly cartoonish idea, I know.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Agree fully, just offering an alternative in the same vein as throwing the paper away into a tip. If your going to do that, you might as well burn it.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
I say we target a 40% increase in emissions, get the hell out of Kyoto, start digging out our own cosl and burning it to ran the rail and generate electricity.
We need to revitalise industry and put us first, we need growth not timid feel good focus groups.
We’re sitting on 10,000 years of power and we just sell it to China. WTF?
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Murray is right. We should be planning to use our coal properly.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
I say we take up all the NZBCSD recommendations and after a couple of years we won’t need these fruitcakes as there will be no development let alone sustainable development and we can all retire dirt poor, noddy’s.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
“Exposure to a carbon price” isn’t enough. We have no guarantee that those offshore apply it properly, so there will be all sorts of hidden problems. Imagine the assurances from a Chinese company that “yes, we’ve been exposed to a carbon price, we bought permits, it’s all audited.” If we start believing that kind of stuff, we’ll all be out of business tomorrow.
As it has been for a while, the right answer is the one that is both Greens and Act’s stated policy – a carbon tax. With a carbon tax we don’t need to worry about what other countries do, we just assess the carbon content of any product at the border, and levy an equivalent import duty. All good with the WTO, all good with our economy.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
I believe AGW is a threat and therefore I believe that ETS are crap.
ETS are evil and planet killing. They are the greatest greenwash of our age. We should never ever go into one. If we do get forced into one it must be the least ambitious and have the smallest possible targets we can get away with.
The fact remains that NZ is an efficient place to farm sheep and cows, because we have a temperate climate and plenty of rainfall. Another fact is that NZ is not an efficient place to grow trees, compared to say a tropical rainforest. Any ETS we adopt therefore subsidises our enviromentally unsustainable pine forests and penalises the enviromentally sustainable cattle farms of NZ – and that is not the worst of it.
The worst of it is how ETS schemes interact with other jurisdictions, where our ETS will incentivise their profits on the basis of our relative carbon pricing. Our ETS will push down the price of lumber and push up the price of beef – these changes will be felt in Brazil by making their forests worth less and their cattle land worth more. Brazil has lots of forests that can quite easily be converted to cattle land. Our ETS will effectively kill Amazonian Rainforest. The more of these perverse incentives we put in place here the more rainforest the planet will lose.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
have they mistakenly put “gross” in there? They talk about purchasing internationally where the marginal cost is higher to reduce domestically – which suggests they mean net, no?
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Partly correct. We certainly benefit from accidents of good soils and climate, but NZ is still a very efficient place to grow trees.
Forest product exports are our third largest export earner (below meat and dairy, above marine products, wool etc). Growing conditions are so favourable to some species, that Monterey pine reaches maturity in a mere 23-28 years compared to its native California.
Tropical rainforests are certainly far more bodiverse, but the proportion of trees with commercial value per hectare is much, much lower. Tropical hardwoods are scattered in a mosaic of other species of almost no timber value. You can chip or pulp them for a low grade product, but you can’t compete in crucial log and high-grade (e.g. J-grade) markets.
Tropical rainforests also have significant problems with soil fertility, as compared to temperate forests, a lot of the nutirent-stores are bound up in the vegetation. Once you clear these forests, you take a large stock of nutrients away. In sub-tropical and temperate climates, a lot more the forest nutrients stays in the soil and is available for recycling back to regenerating plants.
The difficulties in NZ with regard to forestry have more to do with shipping costs, and in the last decade, the rather pressing problem of high interest rates and exchange rates. Production-wise, we are big enough to rate as one of the big players in the global forest-product market.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Ryan, a problem with a lot of tips is that the breakdown of rubbish without oxygen creates methane as a by-product. There is technology to use this methane for power generation. I am not sure if burning the paper is more efficient, or even recycling more efficient.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
I reckon we should all commit suicide and let the planet go back to its pristine state whatever that is supposed to be.
We’ll let the ants and termites inherit the earth and leave in up to them to deal with the issues of hymenopterious climate change or HCC that most surely will arise.
I expect they will deal with it by carrying on as they always have and the Earth will orbit the Sun a few thousand million more times before the ultimate catastrophe overwhelms it.
But hey at least it wont be our fault.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Andrei 5:50 pm,
“I reckon we should all commit suicide and let the planet go back to its pristine state whatever that is supposed to be.”
Don’t tell anyone, but in the end it ALL gets burnt up anyway. Talk about carbon emissions Trev.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
This is one of those issues that tends to inflame entomologists- termites aren’t hymenopterans, they’re isopterans
They’re still both just a basic prey-item for the true cryptozoic predators- the Chthoniidae.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
Surely all Green Party and Greenpeace members should be solely levied for the increased emission costs?
These bastards forced alternate fuels and the resultant palm oil onto the world which is the cause of most deforestation and then what the people who are happy using 96 Super to pay.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
This is one of those issues that tends to inflame entomologists- termites aren’t hymenopterans, they’re isopterans
You know as I wrote that line I wondered if you’ld ping me on it Chthoniid
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
LOL- so I didn’t disappoint.
Good thing I’m an old arachnologist then.
But on a more serious note, having a more coherent forestry policy everywhere makes a great deal of sense, irrespective of the GHG consequences.
The current choice we are being given, is partly to bear an economic hit in NZ so corrupt governments in developing countries can contine to pay firms and people to chop down their forests. I’m not thrilled.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Murray said,
My sentiments exactly.
Vote:I emailed Nick Smith a few days ago, suggesting a 40% increase as a target. Have not heard back from him yet. It would tie in well with two ambitions: 1. Better plant growth to help feed the world (higher CO2 increases yields); 2. We need to increase activity and productivity if we want to catch the GDP level of Australia.
July 29th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
“Pissing into the wind may seem futile but carrying on farting with the wind is worse.”
And voting Green will save you from 72 climatic haemoids one thousand times over because Gaia is God.
Vote Green. For this reason. This is the only reason to Vote Green.
Vote:July 29th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
This is all so much bullshit. AGW is a crock of shit and the sooner the world wakes up to this the better. Perhaps one good thing to come out of the global financial crisis is that people will realise we can’t afford to spend money on bollocks like this.
Vote:July 30th, 2009 at 12:12 am
Oh for the love of God, lets say zero percent. I think we have more immediate things fucking the economy that deserve our attention.
Vote:July 30th, 2009 at 8:16 am
We can forward or we can go back.
Going forward means increasing emissions and screw opinion. Going back means substantial human suffering for many many New Zealanders. NEITHER will change the climate in the slightest.
Pick ONE.
Vote:July 30th, 2009 at 8:24 am
this whole debate is taking on an alice in wonderland quality. time for a bit of a reality check.
New Zealand’s income and standard of living is going backwards. In 1974 we stood at 1.2X the OECD average. In 1984 our national income level was about 1.0X the OECD average. At present it is about 0.85X. And flatlining.
Our input costs are already high, and our costs of sending products to market are already among the highest in the world.
Our banks (all foreign subsidiaries) won’t lend money to build productive assets – but will lend on property. So we have remarkably low capital depth in NZ firms (made up for with low labour costs)
Our per capita GDP is growing at 1%, when if we want to catch up with Australia it has to grow at 4%.
These carbon targets are going to require getting rid of cattle, and only increasing the cost of power. these are some of the critical inputs to productivity, exporting and growth.
So how, if we cripple our export industries are we going to make and sell things to earn enough money to pay for the standard of living we aspire to (and no, not big tvs, I’m talking about healthcare, education and retirement income here).
The anti-carbon campaigners think that eliminating economic activity is a feature, not a bug. Don Elder made this point at a meeting in Chch a couple of weeks ago, where the person who advocated getting rid of 40% of the dairy herd got a standing ovation. Well lets hope that person and his audience have independent means and never need healthcare on the state, because if you start killing off billions of dollars a year in export potential then you start eliminating services pretty damn fast.
The advocates always claim that “green jobs” will magically replace the real jobs lost, but sadly there is no evidence anywhere that this is true. It also matters that NZ is in CER. While we experiment with cutting our own throats, our most productive workers and business people continue to drain across the Tasman, and they won’t be coming back.
Can anyone explain why this is a good thing for NZ, because i for one can’t.
Vote:July 30th, 2009 at 8:32 am
Because it makes us “feel good” niggle.
Vote:July 30th, 2009 at 9:52 am
As far as I can tell the economics of the pro-ETS movement have been constructed strangely.
To generate the impetus to enact climate change combating legislation their model must assume that a catastrophic climate change cost (C) with a probability (x) of being very likely to occur. C = very big number; x ~ 1.0.
Then they generate a cost model for an ETS cap’n'trade solution, except for the purposes of this model they assume x = 0 and discount C out of their model all together.
They change their own data points to suit their own desired conclusions.
Vote:July 30th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
From the NZBSCD press release:
“The Business Council – whose 64 member companies’ annual sales of $59 billion equate to about 43% of gross domestic product – says the best outcome for both the planet and New Zealand from the Copenhagen talks later this year would be a very widely shared commitment to reduced global emissions sufficient to stabilise climate change gases at 450ppm by 2050.”
Wow 43% of GDP!
Good to see that these companies would like to see NZ target at least a 20% reduction by 2020 and possibly 30% if those conditions are met.
Vote:July 31st, 2009 at 10:24 am
From the NZBSCD website:
One definition of sustainable development that appears to have more resonance with the general public is that used by the United Kingdom government: “Sustainable development is about ensuring a better quality of life for everyone, now and for generations to come.” This focus of sustainable development on improving quality of life is becoming more widely accepted by government, companies, civil society organisations, and others. A quality of life focus makes the concept more aspirational, and it changes the tone and content of the sustainable development debate so that the emphasis is more on solutions than problems.
With that definition, no wonder Shell, Fletchers, Fonterra, Progressive, etc can sign up for some free P.R.
Interesting that membership revolts against the “Climate Science is Settled” position taken by activists who hijacked professional bodies are now occuring in both chemistry and physics:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/30/american-chemical-society-members-revolting-against-their-editor-for-pro-agw-views/
Vote:http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/27/american-physical-society-reviewing-its-climate-stance/
July 31st, 2009 at 11:39 am
I am surprised that this media release did not get more attention:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0907/S00283.htm
Totally shows the lack of depth of the NZIER report:
“The scenarios NZIER and Infometrics use are also based on an assumption, according to the report, of “no change in technology or forestry in response to carbon prices”.
However, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) says in the report that a carbon price of $20 per tonne would lead to up to 100,000 ha of forests being planted.
“On that basis, a carbon price of $200 per tonne would lead to nine times that volume being planted. At even $100 per tonne, most sheep and wool farmers in New Zealand would find it economic to convert all their land to forestry,” Mr Neilson says.
Some 30 million tonnes of carbon will be sequestered (stored by trees) by 2020 with a carbon price of $20. So at $200 per tonne, as NZIER and Infometrics assume, there could also be a nine fold increase in sequestration. New Zealand would go into an emissions surplus, which it could sell on world markets.”
Vote:July 31st, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Bullion, how many people will starve when NZ farms are all converted to forests? What lunatic definition of sustainability is this?
Vote:July 31st, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Alan, I am not commenting on food production just the lack of depth in NZIER’s report. It will find a balance where some farmers may convert land to forest as it is more economical for them, which will reduce the supply of produce pushing up prices of produce so some farmers may continue farming as that is more economical for them. Some farmers may switch to producing less carbon intensive produce, or use less carbon intensive methods.
The ETS will help better reflect the true costs of products.
I do think there is a lot of marginal land (just look at the hills with slips and soil creep) where it may be more efficient for farmers to turn to forest.
Vote:July 31st, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Alan Wilkinson 12:58 pm,
“Bullion, how many people will starve when NZ farms are all converted to forests? What lunatic definition of sustainability is this?”
It probably won’t matter much Alan. We already pay export prices for our [second grade] meat. Maybe we could import our meat in the future? Heck, it might even have originated here, and yet be cheaper than the prices we pay currently.
Talking about meat; I often feel so guilty after having purchased some at the local supermarket that when I get home I immediately bury it in the garden incase, after having consumed it, I fart and add to the methane in the upper atmosphere. It’s my way of carbon-sinking.
Vote: