Kiwiblog

The Herald reports:

Big earners are lining up for the Government’s home insulation subsidy, a survey suggests, prompting fears middle income earners will miss out unless the scheme gets more Government money.

An online survey of 1578 homeowners found high earners were twice as likely to want to take advantage of floor and ceiling insulation subsidies under which home owners must pay up to $3500 themselves.

That sounds about right to me. Must untargeted schemes have higher income earners take more advantage of them. This is why I tend to support targeting over universal provision, and why stuff like tax incentives for health insurance tends not to increase the number of people who have health insurance.

The $323 million scheme gives grants of up to $1300 to insulate floors and ceilings in homes built before 2000, and $500 towards a heat pump or other energy-efficient home heating.

The poll suggests about 280,000 home owners may apply – pushing demand well above the four-year target of insulating and improving heating in 180,000 homes.

This is quite possible, but I would be cautious about that figure. The poll is done by the NZ Business Council for Sustainable Development and I suspect those who respond to their polls (done through an online sample, not random phone polling) are far more environmentally aware than the average home owner, and hence more likely to say they are interested in such a scheme.

Homeowners making more than $200,000 a year made up only 1 per cent of respondents, but 45 per cent of them planned to get help with home insulation costs, as did 35 per cent of those making $70,000 to $100,000 and 29 per cent of those on $100,000 and $150,000.

I can not believe they are quoting results for homeowners making more than $200k a year. By their own admission that is 1% of respondents or 16 people. So that figure of 45% has a margin of error of 25.8%.

Those other figures quoted may have very high margin of errors also. Normally I would check the source report but it doesn’t appear to be online yet.

The 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:

1. Competitors of our trade-exposed, emission-intensive industries are exposed to a price on carbon (vital)
2. There is overwhelming participation by developed countries in taking responsibility for 25 – 40% reductions in emissions by 2020 from a 1990 base
3. 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)
4. 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.

The NZ Herald fact checks John Key and finds carbon emissions in NZ have grown even faster than what he said in the debate (mind you I think he was referring to emissions under Clark’s Government while the Herald is referring to since 1990).

Peter Neilson of the NZ Business Council for Sustainable Development defends his former Caucus colleague Helen saying:

As the New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development points out it is all a bit more complicated than it seems.

Chief executive Peter Neilson said that while the reality was that New Zealand emissions had been increasing, that was because our economy had been growing.

Many of the countries with reduced emissions were in recession .

So this means that the Government is now sucessfuly reducing emissions, by having the economy go into recession. Hey if we turn the recession into a depression, then we’ll make our 1990 target easily!

It is very odd. Many, many members of the Business Council for Sustainable Development have been calling for an opportunity to have input into the revised ETS which the Government is finalising. You see it will be very different to the current one before select committee.

However the NZBCSD is against their own members having further input into the legislation and has attacked National’s call for another round of submissions on the revised scheme. The CEO, Peter Neilsen, is a former Labour Cabinet Minister.

It would be useful for someone to ask the members of the NZBCSD whether or not they agree with the press statement gone out. I daresay very few would. Many of their members have pleaded for input into the revised scheme that the Government and Select Committee are working on. Their members include:

BMW Group New Zealand
BP Oil New Zealand Limited
Contact Energy Limited
Deloitte
Fletcher Building Ltd
Fonterra Co-operative Group Ltd
Honda New Zealand Limited
Meridian Energy Ltd
Mighty River Power Limited
Rio Tinto Aluminium (New Zealand) Limited
Shell New Zealand Limited
Solid Energy New Zealand Limited
Toyota New Zealand Limited
Transpower NZ Ltd
TrustPower Limited
Vector Limited

I would be amazed if many, if not all, of those firms do not want the ability to be able to do a submission on the revised scheme. Labour has delayed every sector bar forestry from coming in until 2011 anyway, so an extra three or four months is of minor consequence.

And I may be wrong, but I suspect many do not support the Government making a profit of $22 billion from the scheme, as would currently be the case.

There is no portfolio area where the difference between rhetoric and reality is greater – than environment – specifically climate change.  Clark talks about carbon neutrality while her growth in carbon emissions record is amongst the worse in the world compared to Kyoto targets.

Now a report by the NZ Institute reveals that the Government’s emissions trading scheme (already under fire by multiple groups) and other announced policies will have NZ miss our Kyoto target by 38 years!

Instead of getting back to our 1990 levels by 2012, they predict it won’t happen until 2050. Dr Skilling makes a valuable point:

Half of New Zealand’s emissions come from agriculture but it is harder to redesign a cow than a car.

The Government has voted in Bali to have a target of reducing emissions by 2020 to 25% to 40% below 1990 levels. To be blunt this is just not going to happen – it is almost a con. Even National’s goal of a 50% reduction by 2050 is looking overly optimistic according to NZI who suggest a 30% reduction by 2050 would be about as challenging as NZ could manage.

Related to this is a poll out by the NZ Business Council for Sustainable Development.  It’s a poll of those who take part within an online panel so not as robust as a truly random poll, but the Hive points out one interesting aspect:

When asked which of the two main parties would be best to manage climate change only 33% picked Labour and 32% picked National.

Also 35% of respondents ranked the Government’s management of climate change as below average and only 18% above average.  Not good when this is meant to be Labour’s biggest issue.

This strongly suggests that the public (or at least those who take part in NZBCSD surveys) are seeing through the Government’s rhetoric and realising how appalling their actual record has been.  I mean it is almost unthinkable that say a year ago just as many people would cite National being as good as Labour on climate change.