Charles Chauvel
Climate Change Issues Spokesperson
24 December 2010
Media Statement
Labour urges ETS review panel to give scheme teeth
“National's Emissions Trading Scheme needs to be given a set of teeth by the review panel appointed by Nick Smith
yesterday, says Labour's Climate Spokesperson Charles Chauvel.
“The Scheme should be scaled up to full obligation immediately. The so-called 50% obligation, where the Government
subsidises the price of carbon, is unsustainable, distorts the carbon market, and blunts the price signal intended to be
sent by an ETS”, Charles Chauvel says.
“If NZ wants to avoid burning a lot of gas to generate electricity, to achieve a long-term turnaround in deforestation,
and bring about changes in consumer behaviour around energy and transport use, we need a stronger ETS. And we need the
revenues from the scheme to pay to help bring about these changes, rather than to provide an ongoing and unaffordable
subsidy to polluters, as the ETS currently does.
“Agriculture, accounting for nearly 48% of NZ's greenhouse gas emissions, needs to come into the ETS without any further
delay, as do refrigerant gases and the waste sector.
“Experts like Julia Hoare and Chris Insley, who advised the special ETS select committee on the design of the scheme,
know all this, and it's comforting to see people of their calibre on the review committee. I hope that their views will
be given special weight by the panel, which has an over-representation of farming interests, no significant
environmental or economic expertise, and is politicised from the outset by the presence of former National Party
President Geoff Thompson', Charles Chauvel says.
“It is also premature to ask the panel to consider linkages with any Australian ETS, given the early state of
development of proposals there. Instead, the panel should be tasked with examining sectoral linkages with the EU ETS,
the Pacific Northwest Scheme in North America, and with a proposed ETS being designed in China, all areas of major
opportunity for NZ that have been ignored by Nick Smith and Tim Groser to date.” said Charles Chauvel.
ENDS