$270 a year more in energy costs for householders – Government pushes fossil fuel / agricultural corporate welfare

There are a series of must read climate related articles recently by Newsroom’s Marc Daalder and RNZ’s Kirsty Johnston.

Daalder has been following the Coalition’s policies closely; last week revealing that National and ACT have dismantled environmental / climate protections, and from a raft of science driven recommendations, explicitly chosen policies consistent with “catastrophic warming” and “unprecedented peril”

In October, it was revealed that National and ACT, with the unanimous support of NZ First, would break its election promise to price agricultural pollution, as well as increase farmers’ methane allowances, while pushing back legal deadlines around the government’s climate responsibilities.

It had also eliminated a multi-billion dollar climate fund to pay for Nicola Willis’s tax cuts, and committed to subsidising the fossil fuel industry with $200 million.

According to experts, this would put New Zealand in the unenviable position of being “the only country in the world to weaken an emissions target entrenched in law”.

Daalder points out agricultural methane is responsible for:

70% of New Zealand’s contribution to global warming since the preindustrial era. Permitting greater amounts of the gas, which is short-lived but superheats the atmosphere in that short life, to be released means a warmer world than otherwise.

And that officials have told the government that besides likely breaching NZ’s international commitments and trade deals, it was effectively transferring costs from farmers to households, with a likely increase of $270 a year in energy bills from the 2030s.

Except, of course, we all know, that like the 3 Waters repeal implications of meteoric water infrastructure costs (a minimum of $100 billion is due over the next 10 years) – that National will play the same hand of concealment.

A November report confirms Local Water Done Well will cost taxpayers more than Labour’s 3 Waters and Simon Watts has tried to bat off inquiries – with National explicitly hiding the impacts from Kiwis through its forced rates cap, combined with putting on councils to sell off local government assets, and amalgamation.

But as Standard and Poors pointed out last month, all this means is it will force the new water entities to take on considerable (and more) debt, with that debt and infrastructure requirements merely being shuffled around rather than disappearing.

This week, RNZ confirmed that Local Water Done Well will cost $9000 million more than Labour's 3 Waters model

The government has also capitulated to NZ First Deputy Leader Shane Jones demands to “help” the fossil fuel industry, by putting Kiwi taxpayers on the hook for decommissioning costs for oil fields.

The last clean up cost for the Tui oilfields from an international operator cost us $500 million while hundreds of millions of profits was siphoned overseas. And this week it was revealed that NZ will have to fork out $256 million to clean up the Stockton coal mine, a figure significantly higher than previous estimates.

October:

“Shane Jones wouldn’t guarantee the changes wouldn’t lead to a repeat of the Tui oil field situation, but said New Zealand needed to strike a balance between protecting the Crown’s books from that risk and enticing new oil and gas developers to the country.”

Incredulous, isn’t it?

And the recent article by Daalder shows Watts again intends to move it all through urgency over Christmas despite there being no rationale to do so.

Nor is it clear why the major policy changes must be passed before the end of the year. While some smaller, technical changes in the legislation need to be made by December 31, both the methane target change and the carbon market de-linking have no inherent deadline.

Green Party co-leader and climate spokesperson Chlöe Swarbrick told Newsroom the two policies could easily be inserted into separate changes to the Zero Carbon Act which are expected to go through a standard legislative process next year.

“The Government has knowingly made the choice to truncate the process. As we heard from officials in response to my questioning at the hearing last week, officials advised on timeframes for select committee input. Ministers obviously decided that they weren’t interested in hearing from members of the public on this,” she said.

Asked why the target change needed to be passed under urgency before the end of the year, Watts said simply that it was a priority for the Government.

“It’s been a priority under this coalition Government to get this change made and passed. We’re a really busy Government, we want to make sure that’s done before Christmas,” he said.

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Recommended articles:

Marc Daalder for Newsroom – Govt to rush climate target change through Parliament under urgency

Kirsty Johnson for RNZ – The businesses trapped by New Zealand’s energy crisis

This is a repost from Mountain Tui Substack