Grandfathering limits the extent to which an emitter is accountable for emissions to any increase above a baseline year. The forestry industry has advocated a similar kind of shelter for emissions from new plants.
"There are some encouraging signals that the Government has been listening to what we and others have been saying. Whether this is translated into action remains to be seen," Liddell said.
The Government is expected to outline its preferred policies for implementing Kyoto next week.
The competitive challenge the company faced was enormous, Liddell told shareholders. For example a new 3 million tonne pulp and paper plant - five times the size of Kinleith - had been announced in China, Carter Holt's fastest growing market.
"We also face tariff barriers that progressively increase in size the greater the value added in the product." That biased processing investment to be close to the consumer rather than the forest, increasing the risk NZ would be limited to exporting logs.
But the company continued to invest, including $300 million upgrading Kinleith and $100 million in a new laminated veneer lumber mill in Northland.
One shareholder said that when he had bought Carter Holt shares 17 years ago he had been told it would one day be a $5 stock. He was still waiting.
Chairman Sir Wilson Whineray sympathised. "Frankly we are just not earning enough. We need to be earning half as much again or more. But as the market for pulp and logs moves up our costs won't change and we should do well. We will have a happier result this time next year."
Another shareholder lamented the company's "lousy" dividend, of 3c for the nine months to December 31.
Three directors, Kerry McDonald, John Faraci and Evans Heath were re-elected unopposed and without dissent.
nzherald.co.nz/climate
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
United Nations Environment Program
World Meteorological Organisation
Framework Convention on Climate Change
Executive summary: Climate change impacts on NZ
IPCC Summary: Climate Change 2001
