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Agriculture excluded from scope of government's Emissions Trading Scheme review

Rural News
Agriculture excluded from scope of government's Emissions Trading Scheme review

Climate Change Issues Minister Tim Groser says the Government has begun a review of New Zealand's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), but the full inclusion of agriculture "remains off the table at present."

Groser says the Government has decided not to include agriculture in the scope of the review.

"The Government has previously said it would only bring biological emissions from agriculture fully into the ETS if there were economically viable and practical technologies to reduce these emissions. We are putting considerable investment in research and development to find new options to reduce agricultural emissions, and we will continue to work with the agricultural sector to enable and incentivise the sector to adopt new mitigation options as they become available," Groser says.

"However, the full inclusion of agriculture in the ETS remains off the table at present." 

The ETS review will assess the scheme's operation and effectiveness to 2020 and beyond, adds Groser.

“In July we set an ambitious target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions after 2020,” Groser says. “This review will look at how the NZ ETS may have to evolve to support New Zealand in meeting this new target."

“We also want to ensure the NZ ETS can continue to support New Zealand’s transition to a low emissions economy, and that we are prepared for the costs and opportunities associated with this transition."

He says the review will focus on three areas: 1) What to do about some transition measures that were introduced to moderate the initial impacts of the ETS. 2) How the ETS needs to evolve to meet future targets. And; 3) Operational and technical improvements.

A discussion document has been released on the Ministry for the Environment’s website. And you can see more on the issues here.

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4 Comments

I am a farmer and I think the governments approach to the ETS around agriculture stinks. No communication has been had and It is short sightedness that is causing the farmers and land owner to miss developing new avenues of income.
I think that agriculture should be brought into the ETS, the whole lot not just the farting belching animals.
Grasslands need to acknowledged for the potential of sequestering carbon to the soil, new forests should have a benefit of gaining the carbon credit of the full potential of the carbon locked up. New bio tech should have access to grants and credit lines to develop them. France, Australia both recognise the importance of bringing the grasslands and carbon sequestering to their ETS. Its about time we did the same. The New Zealand economy is missing out on billions of dollars of extra revenue if this is not brought forward, also the soil is where the carbon needs to be nowhere else.

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I agree that the governments approach to agriculture stinks.......but who the heck is advising them???

I for one think that any scheme implemented will no doubt be a stuff up which will be expensive to administer and as usual the most important elements will be left off !! I had enough trouble dealing with the stupid websites involved for forestry carbon.....who the hell in the real world of business has time to sit around doing all this bloody form filling and crap that is demanded??

We need to keep in mind that all the environmental hackers don't understand sequestering carbon to the soil or carbon farming as it is widely becoming known as.......What's a ton of carbon worth? And is it going to be worth enough to justify the extensive record keeping that will be involved?

At the moment I am more than happy that agriculture is left out.....we have far too much compliance crap to deal with......

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NZ does not even recognise the CO2 absorbed ex grasslands so we
use gross vs net emissions which are only half the published figures.

A maize crop to ethanol receives absorption credits yet if fed to cows
no credit applies. How crazy is that ?

Halving our farm emissions would show NZ in the much more favourable light
that scientifically we should be measured on.

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too many employed measuring, and talking to justify their jobs, while agricultural production is dropping.

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