The Zero Carbon Bill Provides For:
- Establishing a Climate Change Commission as a Crown entity that provides advice to the Minister for Climate Change on achieving overarching emission reduction targets, among other matters.
- The setting of targets for emissions reduction, which require that:
- Net emissions of greenhouse gases, other than biogenic methane, be reduced to zero by 2050, and for each subsequent calendar year.
- Gross emissions of biogenic methane be reduced by 10% less than 2017 emissions by 1 January 2030
- Gross emissions of biogenic methane be reduced by at least 24% to 47% less than 2017 emissions by 1 January 2050, and for each subsequent calendar year.
- The Climate Change Commission to carry out a national climate change risk assessment every six years.
Federated Farmers Position:
Federated Farmers supports New Zealand playing its part in addressing climate change by pursuing action consistent with the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement, including the need to safeguard food security. Federated Farmers supports aspects of the Zero Carbon Bill, including provision for the Climate Change Commission, emissions budgets, and taking a split gases approach to emissions reduction. However, we are strongly opposed to the ZCB’s approach to split gases and the resulting emission reduction targets.
In an ideal world, the Government would be using a more appropriate metric for different greenhouse gases, such as GWP*, which more accurately reflects the true atmospheric warming of each greenhouse gas – particularly with respect to methane. The current metric used (GWP100) fails to accurately estimate the warming impact of short-lived gases such as methane. If a more appropriate metric was adopted (such as GWP*) a policy of net zero for all gases may be supported
Federated Farmers position is that, under current atmospheric conditions, the ZCB targets for biogenic methane should be:
- 3% net by 2030; and
- 10% net by 2050