Government insists it’s still committed to climate goals, pointing out axed policies weren’t that great to begin with

The Government insists it is still committed to meeting its own emissions budgets after throwing multiple climate policies onto Prime Minister Chris Hipkins’ policy bonfire.

Under rules introduced in Labour’s first term, Cabinet papers with a climate change implication must include an assessment that comments on how they will impact climate goals.

Hipkins confirmed to the Herald that his reprioritisation Cabinet paper included this assessment, but because the paper simply reversed policies that already existed, this section just referred back to those original papers.

“What it noted is there was a climate change assessment in all of the original papers that made those decisions,” HIpkins said.

Two of the policies torched on Monday, the Clean Car Upgrade and the Social leasing scheme, were meant to contribute 0.0025 and 0.0027 megatonnes of emissions reduction to the first emissions budget (2022-2025).

The sustainable biofuels mandate, which would have reduced emissions by 1 megatonne in that first budget, was binned in the first round of reprioritisations.

Hipkins told RNZ’s morning report he believed there were “better ways of achieving those emissions reduction targets than those [policies]”.

New Zealand’s total net emissions in the first budget are 290 megatonnes of CO2 equivalent over 2022-2025.

Single policies funded through the Government’s GIDI fund, which is meant to decarbonise industry, are estimated to produce many multiples of these emissions reductions for a fraction of the price.

In an optimistic scenario, the Government might be able to use the $568 million it saved by killing the Clean Car Upgrade, to fund better value-for-money emissions reductions.

Hipkins said some of the policies had goals alongside emissions reduction, which might account for their unimpressive emissions reduction potential.

“Some of them were focused on equitable access to electric vehicles. Actually, if you want to look at the best way of reducing emissions from transport and providing low income families with the best way of reducing their transport emissions I think there are better ways to spend that money,” he said.

Climate Change Minister James Shaw, has the ability to ask the Climate Change Commission to give additional advice on a Government policy that has a climate impact.

Shaw said he had not decided whether to use this power yet.

“Obviously, this only happened yesterday so we haven’t had a conversation about where to make up the gap [in emissions reductions],” Shaw said.

Climate change minister James Shaw will talk to departmental chief executives about possible emissions reductions. Photo / Tania Whyte

He said he would start by talking to departmental chief executives about other proposals that could be put forward to cut emissions.

Meanwhile transport Minister Michael Wood poured cold water on the idea the Government had U-turned on some of the more contentious parts of its transport package, announced last week.

The Herald reported on a briefing that noted the Government would be looking to change the way maintenance funding was spent, allowing councils to build cycleways and bus lanes at the same time as they were maintaining roads.

“Councils themselves have asked us to look at this issue,” Wood said.

Speaking to the Herald about the original story, Wood used the example of a council doing maintenance work and instead of replacing like-for-like, the council built a bus lane at the same time as it fixed the road.

“Instead of just going in and doing the maintenance and replacing the road as it is, the approach that we’re outlining is we talk to the council and would say, doesn’t it make sense at the same time as we’re doing that maintenance to put in place capacity for a bus lane?” Wood said.

On Tuesday, Wood used a different example - using the Government’s new transport priority of resilience.

“Currently, in the rebuild in Hawke’s Bay, if we just do like-for-like replacement, we will potentially build in some of the same vulnerabilities that we’ve experienced.

“So it probably makes sense for us to consider betterment in terms of more resilient infrastructure,” Wood said.

Wood said the same thing in a transport select committee meeting last week.

National’s transport spokesman Simeon Brown attacked the original announcement for raiding “the maintenance budget for our roads to take money from fixing potholes to put in place cycleways which very few New Zealanders use to go to work”.

An early set of priorities for the Government’s triennial review of the transport budget - the Government Policy Statement (GPS) had put emissions reduction as the “overarching focus” of the plan.

However, the Government U-turned on this, citing Cyclone Gabrielle, saying an emergency transport plan would be put up instead.

Wood could not say whether the new plan would contain the same level of emissions reductions as the old plan.

“There hasn’t been a draft GPS that’s been put out that we can compare it to at this stage,” Wood said.