Climate Change: Raising the bar

One of the obligations of the Paris Climate Change Agreement is for every country to set a "Nationally Determined Contribution" - an NDC - of emissions cuts. The Key government initially set an unambitious NDC of a 30% cut (from 2005 levels) by 2030. The Ardern government later increased this to 50%, reflecting the need for greater ambition as well as greater opportunities for reductions. Unfortunately, they both expected to rely on "offshore mitigation" to meet a big chunk of those commitments - paying someone else to reduce emissions instead of reducing them ourselves, at huge expense (which makes you wonder whether we shouldn't just spend that money cutting emissions here...).

The Paris Agreement also requires parties to update those NDCs with more ambitious ones every five years. So the government asked He Pou a Rangi what it could realistically achieve domestically, as a factor in its decision. The Commission has reported back today, and based on its modelling, found that:

it would be feasible to achieve greater net emissions reductions in the NDC2 period (2031–2035) than the NDC1 commitment, through domestic action alone.

Depending on whether its set as a point or budget target, He Pou a Rangi's central scenario is for a 55% to 60% emissions cut from domestic action, with ambitious policy able to push that to 70% to 75%. So that's where NDC2 is going to have to start, with any contribution through offshore mitigation adding to that. And given that the current level of that is 15% to 20%, it looks like our overall target should be in the range of a 70% to 80% cut from 2005 levels - at least if we are to be consistent with our 2021 target.

The climate-denier coalition isn't going to want to do this. But other countries - and in particular, the EU, which has a climate clause in their FTA with us - have expectations. And maybe they'll just agree to it because it will be Somebody Else's Problem. And if they don't, and set a weak target, the next government can always simply raise it.