Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Adrian Macey: Victoria University Climate Change Adjunct Professor on the Government's new Emissions Reductions Plan

Transcript

Adrian Macey: Victoria University Climate Change Adjunct Professor on the Government's new Emissions Reductions Plan · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The government reckons New Zealand could hit its net zero
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: emissions goal of twenty fifty six years earlier than expected,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: which will be a surprise to some Minister of a
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: climate change Simon Watt says we could reach net zero
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: as soon as twenty forty four with his new emissions
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: reduction plan, which is released this morning. It has eight
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: policy steps to curb emissions. So I'll run you through
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: introducing agricultural emissions pricing by twenty thirty, recognizing carbon capture
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: as part of the ETS, increasing the amount of gas
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: captured by landfills, putting in ten thousand charging units for evs,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: and more.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: So.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: I'm joined now by Victoria University Climate Change adjunct professor
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: and man with a long business guard again, Dr Adrian Macy. Hello, Adrian,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: good morning. You've had a look at the plan. Will
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: it work? For Simon.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: It's well, of course he looked a lot at twenty
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: fifty and twenty fifty that's you know, that's sort of
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: ten governments ahead of us. But I think just what
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: struck me as two things actually one plan has got
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: a very strong focus on the economy, on the health
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: of the economy, and a lot of the initiatives are
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: really integrated between economy and climate. And secondly, is that focus,
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: particularly the focus as you've had mentioned on the twenty
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: fifty goal, that's the really important one. And I think
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: what they're doing is they're giving a message to the
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: different sectors business, forestry, agriculture, We're not going to send
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: you to the wall. You've got to be we see
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: you as being prosperous as part of the journey. But
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: also there's these sexral initiatives. They look to me, they're
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: all seem to be quite sensible. The CCS one which
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: you mentioned, that's carbon capture and storage. A number of
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: us think that's going to play a big role if
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: countries are going to meet these net zero targets, so
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: recognizing that is useful. The EVS one rolling out charging stations.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: It does appear to be around on the edges on
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: issues that we haven't really talked about. Everyone just talked about,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: you know, get it an ev or whatever, let this
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: get some more windmills. He's talking about improving organic waste
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: management and landfill gas capture because all these little things
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: do amount to something quite big.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: Well, what he's done, I think is they've focused yes,
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: sector Bisector on things that are quite they look quite practical.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: The other thing they've done, which is not quite so obvious,
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: they've scrapped literally dozens and dozens of projects that were
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: underway in the different government departments, which look to be well,
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: from my view anyway, rather less focused on this practical stuff.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: So I think in that sense it's useful. There are
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: a few question marks. For example, it looks if they're
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: going to be very cautious about changing the free allocation scheme.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: There's been the big industries who can get some free
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: allocation of units under the ETES more polluting ones, and
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: they're certainly not saying well, we're going to scrape all those,
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: So there's a few question marks over it for sure.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Good stuff. Doctor Adrian Masi joins me from Victoria, gunib Sex.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: So there we go. It looks like Simon WHATTS might
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: have done it.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: For more from early edition with Ryan Bridge, Listen live
• 3:06
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• 3:09
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