New Zealand will have to convert thousands of hectares of dairy land into low emissions land use such as horticulture each year, according to the Climate Change Commission.
It will also have to reduce sheep and cattle numbers.
Despite this, the impact on gross domestic product (GDP) will be modest, according to provisional figures. And the total emissions reductions would be considerable, though these figures could change.
This information comes in a report by the Commission on what New Zealand can do to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions between 2031 and 2035. This is a follow up to existing pledges dating from 2015 to 2030.
The issue began with the Paris conference on climate change in 2015.
Then, New Zealand issued a promise – called a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) - to reduce net emissions 30% below 2005 gross emissions by 2030, which was later upgraded to 50%.
There have been persistent claims that New Zealand has not done what it needs to do to make that pledge come true. But progress or no progress, the Climate Change Commission is obliged to look ahead anyway, and help to plan a course of action for the post 2030 world. In that era, a second phase of emissions reductions will have to be applied, known as NDC2.
The report which the commission has just released is intended to help the Government make a decision on NDC2 by next February.
Despite waves of pessimism about slow progress on the first NDC, the Commission tries to strike an upbeat note about prospects for the second.
“The good news is that our latest report shows that it's possible, both economically and in practical terms, for Aotearoa New Zealand to substantially reduce domestic emissions,” says the Chairman of the Commission, Rod Carr.
“But that is only if there is investment and further action in the next six years to decarbonise energy, industry and transport.”
In its report, the Commission breaks down its advice by offering three scenarios: Slow, moderate and fast rates of emissions reductions. It applies those scenarios to agriculture along with several other sectors, including energy, transport, and industry and waste. It argues addressing agriculture is vital, saying 2021 figures showed agriculture producing 51% of New Zealand’s GHG emissions, with most of that being biogenic methane.
In issuing its suggestions for agriculture, the Commission assumes progress will already have been made before the NDC2 era begins.
“To enable emissions reductions in the NDC2 period……we assume the following actions by 2030: Conversion of about 3000 hectares of dairy land per annum to lower emissions land use including horticulture, a build-up of low methane breeding for sheep from 2023 and introduction of low methane breeding for dairy by 2029,” the Commission report says.
And from 2031, there will have to be further reductions reaching 6000 hectares of dairy land and 110,000 hectares of sheep and beef country, according to the most ambitious of the three scenarios.
Along with this would be reductions in the size of the dairy herd, of 8%, 12% and 15% according to the low, middle and high reductions scenarios. Dairy sector revenue would be 1%, 4% and 8% lower.
The loss of dairy land would be greatest in the central North Island while land in Otago and Southland would be most prone to conversion from sheep and beef to forestry. In addition, reductions in dairy size could be varied depending on the conditions faced by individual farmers.
The Commission’s report also looks at forestry. It notes there would have to be a huge increase in planting in the years after 2030, and would be dominated by native forests under the most ambitious scenario, which would add greatly to the cost.
The report also postulates the economic impact of all these options, and finds they would shave between $100 million and $700 million off New Zealand’s GDP, though it adds some costs from the change are hard to pin down, and it does not enumerate the benefits such as less damage to land from mitigated climate change.
Besides agriculture, the report looks at other sectors, and calls for a fast movement away from coal, a slower movement away from gas, greater energy efficiency, along with demand side management and storing surplus CO2 underground. It also wants more electric vehicles and far less organic waste sent to landfills.
Collectively, all this work could reduce annual net emissions by 39% to 69% depending on the range of the three scenarios and on varying methodologies and starting dates for assessing comparative levels.
And the report echoes earlier calls for payments to be made to other countries to help fight the emissions battle, but does not go into detail, saying the main thrust of its report is domestic, not foreign action.
30 Comments
The authors of this report should though spend a little time understanding why Donald Trump won the election as it was in big part people being sick and tired of being lectured to and especially when the lecture is about making you worse off
and the politcians should wind the CCC up and save a few $$ and a few trees
PBK sometimes you need to take a deep breath
Actually I would say the ignorance was on both sides but you are not going to get support by telling people that they will be worse off - and if you keep lecturing people they will switch off regardless of the importance of the message, both of which happened in their election. - and which you are also wont to do
and it will be the same with the COP summit - there will be no wins from telling people they have to pay others especially when adaption work hasnt been happening at home - so the political class (and those seen as woke and/or elites) can make all the promises they like but wont be able to sell them at home without a different approach
PDK
We are all well aware of you strongly held views on this subject and continuous badgering of the readers is tiring.
How about spelling out how we get from here today to the sustainable utopia you think is necessary for the future.
Please do include how voluntary bankruptcy of the current population and governments will be handled.
Have you personally modified your behaviour upon reading and thinking about any of the multitude of links PDK offers each week? The ball is in your court. If you want to be spoon fed you'll never get around to making even minor change. Don't prevaricate, start today.
This site has more information than you could soak up in a month of Sundays:
Not so much voluntary bankruptcy, but debt-elimination, is needed. Steve Keen had the best Idea I've come across; a debt jubilee (used many times in antiquity, and many other cultures outlaw usury). Give everyone say $500,000. Those not in debt, are still relatively ahead. Those in debt - and therefore involuntarily adding to the predicament - would be out of it (at least by that much). And money would be 'worth' diddly squat - which is just fine, it's only a proxy and there was too much of vis-a-vis the planet anyway.
Then we restructure our money system without interest/usury (which is why I chose this site to yammer on, nearly 20 years ago).
Then we monitor the 3 resource classes: Finite, Renewable and Sink. We set FIRM measurements beyond which WE DO NOT GO (rather than the FF nonsense where we propose a 'balance', take that as a norm, then propose a further 'balance'. That's how farming got itself in the cowpat).
Everything else would flow from that; more local trading, more folk involved in food-production, simpler, more robust, more fixable infrastructure/appliances. I suspect most of the starts-with-w-and-rhymes-with-bank 'jobs' in cities, won't be. But there will be room for unlimited education (not the current university business model, of course) and it seems we are down a ways from the peak of that (I reckon we were a more educated society about 1980, than now). There will be room for social interaction (rather than the lonely siloing driven by consumption-as-fast-as-possible). And for about 100 years, there will be room for triage/repurposing specialists; turning useless/obsolete existing kit, into useful stuff.
Using what physical/biological sinks?
That's UNDERGROUND carbon we're ADDING to the above-ground arena, mostly for the energy it gives. Have you any idea how much of that energy we'd have to surrender to do the sequestering?
Goodby growth, is all I can say. Which is why we don't. And why we hide behind phrases like 'emissions trading' - which conveniently hide us from the physical truth.
And I'll tell you something else - the first trillion trees back in the ground, as just replacement of the ones we've razed - and are still razing faster than we are planting.
Thinking is always good - try it; think up your own pen-name...
I’m simply taking about meeting the international commitment that is the subject of this article. Using the system we already have would be a hell of a lot more efficient, cheaper, and less politically painful than what the CCC puts up.
I have the best name on this website
I'm asking about the physics of carbon - not about money.
How is the current 'system' efficient, in physics terms?
How much energy has it allocated to sequestration?
What reduction in atmospheric CO2 has it effected?
What reduction in the rate of CO2 emanation has it attained?
Only fools and horses....
Sigh.
Energy is getting harder to get - it's called EROEI, and it's dropping like a stone.
Energy underwrites all activity - no work is done without it. So energy underwrites money, 100%.
So you can't get 'cheaper carbon' in the 'carbon market'. It's somewhere between an oxymoron and a false assumption.
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