Too little, too late on international units

Plans by the Government  to ban international emissions units that are "environmentally questionable" from New Zealand's emissions trading scheme (ETS) is too little, way too late, says Labour's Climate Change spokesperson Moana Mackey.

"National has gutted the ETS and abandoned Kyoto. If Climate Change Minister, Tim Groser, thinks that today's announcement restores the environmental integrity of the ETS or New Zealand’s reputation then he is deluding himself.

"As he says - the banning of these specific units will do nothing to stop the onslaught of cheap UN offset units headed our way. What he needs to do is make it a requirement that 50 per cent of all units surrendered in New Zealand be domestically sourced, something that would bring us into line with both Australia and the EU.

“If Mr Groser is serious about linking to these schemes in the future then he must impose a quantitative restriction. Australia and Europe are not going to restrict these cheap UN offsets only to have them come in through the back door via linkages with the NZ scheme.

"Apparently Mr Groser thinks the way to convince other countries to adopt legally binding emissions reduction targets is for New Zealand to abandon legally binding emissions targets.

"Mr Groser knows the clock is ticking. Thanks to his Government's actions we face being locked out of international carbon markets from 2015.

“Unfortunately today's announcement is not nearly enough to undo the damage that four years of a National government has done to the environmental integrity of New Zealand’s ETS and to our international reputation.