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Making sense of the latest changes the government has proposed to the way emissions are reduced in New Zealand. The Cop30 conference in Brazil will begin next week, where countries gather to discuss progress towards limiting climate change to well below 2 degrees of warming. Meanwhile, New Zealand has just related a bunch of updates to its climate change policy. “New Zealand’s climate change system can be unnecessarily complex and duplicative in parts, which creates high compliance costs and slows effective action,” said Simon Watts, minister for climate change. Didn’t we already get some new rules about climate change recently? Yeah, I can see why this is confusing. Maybe you’re thinking about how New Zealand’s methane targets were lowered last month, out of step with the Paris Agreement? Or maybe you’re thinking about the adaptation plan the government announced a few days later, a framework for who has to pay for what as climate change gets worse. (Which is definitely happening – the UN has said that “overshooting” 1.5 degrees of warming is already inevitable.) But this is a different announcement, which changes some aspects of the Zero Carbon Act and other climate laws in New Zealand. Tell me more. At 8pm on November 4, Simon Watts sent out a press release announcing a bunch of updates to climate law. There are some changes to emissions reduction plans, the roadmaps the government is required to release showing how it plans to meet emissions budgets and reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. One key update is that the Climate Change Commission will no longer be required to evaluate New Zealand’s emissions plans. Adaptation and emission plans can be revised more easily, without the requirement to consult on changes with the public. There are some changes to the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). The ETS will no longer be linked to New Zealand’s Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement – this means there is no external mechanism to make lowering emissions part of the scheme, and the amount of emissions can be determined by the government instead. The ETS’s settings will be changed every second year, not every year, after the settings are updated for 2026. Some accommodations for extreme weather events are included too, like for how much carbon a forest is absorbing to be recounted if it’s damaged in a disaster. There are some other changes, like making it easier for different activities to count as carbon removal, other than planting forests. Watts also announced that the Carbon Neutral Government Programme, aimed at getting many government agencies to “carbon neutral, has changed its goal from neutrality by 2025 to 2050. Many of these changes will be passed under urgency by the end of the year. What do these changes mean? “These proposed changes will reduce costs to government and business and provide greater certainty, enabling us to make meaningful reductions more efficiently,” said Watts. But not everyone agrees. “You cannot trust the National Party. They supported the cross-partisan Zero Carbon Act and now, in government, are stripping the Climate Change Commission of its powers,” said Chlöe Swarbrick, co-leader of the Green Party. To Tim Naish, chair of the World Climate Research Programme, the changes “allow for more flexibility, or wiggle room, in order to achieve its emissions reductions responsibilities set under the Paris Climate Agreement”. Combined with the methane targets being reduced, he says New Zealand is out of step with international climate consensus. For many groups, the removal of a role for the independent Climate Change Commission is the most worrying part of the new rules. “The commission will hopefully still have a strong role in adaptation planning, and in monitoring government performance on climate action,” said James Renwick, a former climate change commissioner. He would like to see the commission continue to release emissions reduction advice as a benchmark to place beside the government emissions plans. Lisa McLaren, co-director of advocacy group 350 Aotearoa, said it “represents a fundamental shift in the government’s climate approach, because it represents the government effectively backing out of their bipartisan commitment to maintaining the Zero Carbon Act as it stands”. Barry Barton, a law professor from the University of Waikato, said there was a reason why budgets and targets in the Climate Change Act were difficult for politicians to change. “Otherwise we have ministers announcing grand targets and then doing as little as possible to reach them. We went through a long period of that, and we don’t want to go back,” he said. To Barton, the Climate Change Commission’s independent advice to create systematic emissions and adaptation plans connected to global goals was a feature, not a bug. “If ministers grumble about the procedures, then maybe they are working properly.” Oof, so lots of experts are not fans. Are there any good parts? Jocelyn Turnbull, a principal scientist studying the carbon cycle at Earth Sciences New Zealand, said the option to include more non-forestry carbon removals was positive. She supports having more science to evaluate carbon removal, but notes that these credits may not be recognised in international agreements. “Globally, there is a huge amount of scepticism about carbon removals, and that scepticism is well founded. Carbon removal credits, whether voluntary or through things like the ETS, must be real and the quantity backed by strong science.” One political party was definitely in favour of the changes.Act climate spokesperson Simon Court said it was about “taking back control of the climate agenda”. “The changes announced this week mean we will measure success by our own standards, not those set by UN diplomats in distant hotel ballrooms.” Have the changes had any effect yet? The ETS’s market for carbon emissions was weakened immediately after the announcement, plunging 10%. The unexpected reforms made the market less useful, Nigel Brunel, director of the platform operator Marex NZ, told Interest. “This change will hardly inspire confidence. For a market built on trust, credibility is currency, and today’s move appears to have devalued it.” So the UN climate conference is about to start – how will these changes to emissions place New Zealand with our international partners? On November 3, before these new changes were announced, law professor Nathan Cooper from the University of Waikato described New Zealand’s position in the lead-up to Cop, and how New Zealand’s contributions have been criticised as unambitious. He noted that New Zealand’s free trade agreement with the EU required both parties to implement the UN Framework on Climate Change and make contributions to emission reduction in line with the Paris Agreement, as well as supporting trade towards a circular, low-carbon economy. New Zealand leaving the Beyond Oil and Gas coalition earlier this year will also impact which allies it connects with at the conference, and how New Zealand’s climate action is seen on the global stage. Despite this, climate minister Watts insisted in the November 4 press release that the changes “do not lower our ambition”.
