No substantive change planned for NZ's ETS

The Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill was reported back by the Select Committee and tabled in the NZ Parliament this week, largely unchanged from its first reading.
In summary, that means:

• 2 for 1 and the $25 fixed price will be kept until at least 2015 when the Government has stated it intends to review these measures. Amending legislation would be required to end these "transitional" measures.

• Agriculture will remain out of the ETS again until amending legislation to the contrary was passed.

• No mechanism to establish a general quantitative restriction on international units/ minimum NZU surrender requirement has been included (though the Committee notes that there is already a power under the Act - section 30G - to make regulations which impose qualitative or quantitative restrictions).

• The introduction of an explicit power which could allow auctioning within an overall cap on the supply of NZUs.

There are plenty of sensible technical improvements contained in the Bill, for example a fix for the problems faced by professional trustees when applying for certain exemptions for pre-90 land. But it seems that the elephant in the Select Committee room has behaved so well that the Government is happy to accommodate it indefinitely. So unlimited use of UN offsets stays for the moment.

Source: www.carbonmatch.co.nz

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