Adrian Macey: Victoria University Climate Change Adjunct Professor on the Government's new Emissions Reductions Plan

The Government's emissions plan's being described as sensible and practical.  

Climate Change Minister Simon Watts has released the second Emissions Reduction Plan. 

Key policies include more renewable energy projects and introducing both a network of 10,000 EV charging points and agricultural emissions pricing by 2030. 

Victoria University Climate Change Adjunct Professor Adrian Macey told Andrew Dickens they've gone through with a sector-by-sector focus.  

He says they're giving a message to business, forestry, and agriculture that they see them being prosperous as part of this journey. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The government reckons New Zealand could hit its net zero
emissions goal of twenty fifty six years earlier than expected,
which will be a surprise to some Minister of a
climate change Simon Watt says we could reach net zero
as soon as twenty forty four with his new emissions
reduction plan, which is released this morning. It has eight
policy steps to curb emissions. So I'll run you through

(00:20):
introducing agricultural emissions pricing by twenty thirty, recognizing carbon capture
as part of the ETS, increasing the amount of gas
captured by landfills, putting in ten thousand charging units for evs,
and more.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
So.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
I'm joined now by Victoria University Climate Change adjunct professor
and man with a long business guard again, Dr Adrian Macy. Hello, Adrian,
good morning. You've had a look at the plan. Will
it work? For Simon.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
It's well, of course he looked a lot at twenty
fifty and twenty fifty that's you know, that's sort of
ten governments ahead of us. But I think just what
struck me as two things actually one plan has got
a very strong focus on the economy, on the health
of the economy, and a lot of the initiatives are

(01:07):
really integrated between economy and climate. And secondly, is that focus,
particularly the focus as you've had mentioned on the twenty
fifty goal, that's the really important one. And I think
what they're doing is they're giving a message to the
different sectors business, forestry, agriculture, We're not going to send

(01:28):
you to the wall. You've got to be we see
you as being prosperous as part of the journey. But
also there's these sexral initiatives. They look to me, they're
all seem to be quite sensible. The CCS one which
you mentioned, that's carbon capture and storage. A number of
us think that's going to play a big role if

(01:49):
countries are going to meet these net zero targets, so
recognizing that is useful. The EVS one rolling out charging stations.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
It does appear to be around on the edges on
issues that we haven't really talked about. Everyone just talked about,
you know, get it an ev or whatever, let this
get some more windmills. He's talking about improving organic waste
management and landfill gas capture because all these little things
do amount to something quite big.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Well, what he's done, I think is they've focused yes,
sector Bisector on things that are quite they look quite practical.
The other thing they've done, which is not quite so obvious,
they've scrapped literally dozens and dozens of projects that were
underway in the different government departments, which look to be well,
from my view anyway, rather less focused on this practical stuff.
So I think in that sense it's useful. There are

(02:37):
a few question marks. For example, it looks if they're
going to be very cautious about changing the free allocation scheme.
There's been the big industries who can get some free
allocation of units under the ETES more polluting ones, and
they're certainly not saying well, we're going to scrape all those,
So there's a few question marks over it for sure.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
Good stuff. Doctor Adrian Masi joins me from Victoria, gunib Sex.
So there we go. It looks like Simon WHATTS might
have done it.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
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