• About this site|
• Site index|
• Contact us|
• Jobs

Measures to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions in New Zealand Post-2012: Summary of Submissions

1 Introduction

2 Analysis of Responses to Consultation Questions

3 Additional Comments in Submissions

Appendix: Summary of Selected Detailed Emissions Trading Submissions

1 Introduction

Overview

This report summarises submissions to the New Zealand government on the discussion paper Measures to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions in New Zealand Post-2012 (hereafter referred to as Post-2012 Measures). The report begins with background information on how the post-2012 discussion document was developed, the subsequent consultation process and how submissions were received and analysed, and a sectoral breakdown of submitters.

Section 2 then summarises the comments from submitters on eight principal themes:

• general views on proposed climate change policy

• price-based measures

• emissions trading

• greenhouse gas charges

• international competitiveness

• directive regulation

• voluntary agreements

• over-arching comments.

Several submitters made comments that were not covered by questions in the Post-2012 Measures discussion document, but which are relevant to climate change policy development. These comments have been summarised in section 3, and relate to the following topics:

• comments specific to Māori submissions

• comments from the Greenpeace Aotearoa New Zealand form submissions

• union/worker initiatives

• research and development initiatives

• impacts on public health

• local government initiatives

• incentives for small-scale renewable energy

• additional general rates levy

• Kyoto Protocol methodologies

• targets for reducing emissions

• New Zealand’s emissions profile

• criticism of the consultation documents

• further consultation and communication.

Background

In August 2006 Cabinet approved a series of whole-of-government climate change policy work programmes. These work programmes were designed to enable New Zealand to manage climate change as a long-term issue, to play its part in reducing emissions, and to encourage other countries - especially the major emitters - to reduce their emissions.

The work programmes culminated in the following five discussion documents being produced for consultation in December 2006:

• Discussion Paper on Measures to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions in New Zealand Post-2012 (Post-2012 Measures)

• Powering Our Future: Draft New Zealand Energy Strategy to 2050 (draft NZES)

• Draft New Zealand Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy (draft NZEECS)

• Transitional Measures for Electricity and Stationary Energy Supply (Transitional Measures)

• Sustainable Land Management and Climate Change: Options for a Plan of Action.

The purpose of the Post-2012 Measures discussion paper was to start a dialogue on what long-term policy measures would be preferred in New Zealand after the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (2012) to reduce emissions, and protect and enhance sinks, across key sectors of the economy. All five of the discussion documents are available online at the following web address: http://www.mfe.govt.nz/issues/climate/consultation/index.html

Public consultation and consultation with Māori as Treaty partners took place between December 2006 and March 2007. The consultation process included approximately 50 public or multi-sector meetings, workshops and hui, and approximately 100 focused stakeholder meetings. These events took place throughout the country, with over 4,000 people attending. The public were given until 30 March 2007 to make written submissions on the five discussion documents, and 1,776 submissions were received on the Post-2012 Measures document.

This summary report is the results of a detailed analysis of submissions on the Post-2012 Measures discussion document. The review is primarily based on submitted responses to the questions (from 1 to 26) in the Post-2012 Measures document, although the questions from the discussion document have been reordered in this report to enable the comments to be grouped into eight principal themes.

Where possible we have attempted to provide statistics for the responses to the 26 questions. However, 76% of the submissions did not give specific answers to the questions set out in the Post-2012 Measures discussion document, so some interpretation was required when analysing the responses to the questions. Also, a submitter’s support of a certain measure was generally provisional on a number of additional conditions being met, so it was often difficult to tell whether a submission supported or rejected a specific policy measure. This is partly a result of the broad nature of the discussion document, which proposed several policy options for consultation but did not set down any firm policy preferences.

We have used consistent qualitative statements to indicate the level of support for given policy measures. The qualifiers we have used, in order of weighting, are as follows: one, few, some, several, relative majority, majority and vast majority. A relative majority is defined as the largest share of something, which may not be considered a majority; ie, it is the largest group/ category, but is not necessarily a majority (ie, more than 50%).

Submitters

The table below shows the number of submitters from various sectors or interest groups. A full listing of submitters can be found at:

http://www.mfe.govt.nz/issues/climate/consultation/submissions-post-2012.html

The ‘individuals’ group was used for general members of the public. This group included 1,607 form submissions based on a template prepared by Greenpeace Aotearoa New Zealand. The individuals who submitted Greenpeace form submissions may not necessarily be Greenpeace members because the forms were distributed at several public functions. Some submitters made slight alterations to the form submission, not to alter the main points but to place greater emphasis on particular statements or to add further comments. Due to the large number of Greenpeace form submissions and consistent messaging, the comments and statistics on specific questions from the form submissions have been treated separately from other submissions throughout this report. A summary of the key points from the Greenpeace form submissions has also been provided in section 3.

[ Previous|Next