Two developments this week on the Government’s flagship Zero Carbon Bill. First, Parliament’s Environment Committee sent its report recommending changes back to the House, having waded through more than 10,000 public submissions.Second, the Government announced it will rush the Bill through its second and third readings before the Prime Minister flies out to Chile on 14 November to attend APEC.Put another way, the deadline for passing a Bill that will guide New Zealand emissions reduction for the next 30 years,... Read more

Imagine, for a moment, the government were about to pass a Zero Carbon bill that takes the most direct path to success on our emissions targets. What would it look like? Read more

Dear Minister of Finance, I am writing to apply for the position of Lead Economic Advisor to the Government, a position held by The Treasury since the 1940s. Please find enclosed my CV with references. I feel I can really add value in this role. I am a fast learner, a team player, and I have strong skills in Microsoft Excel with more than 18 months of experience. Read more

Lost in the government’s response to the Interim Climate Change Committee this week was the decision to put on ice its 100% renewable electricity policy to focus on other more effective measures. Read more

If politics makes it hard to change a policy after it is announced, then testing policies before they are announced has potentially huge benefits. Read more

It has been four weeks since the Interim Climate Change Committee (ICCC) delivered to Minister James Shaw its analysis of the government’s 100% renewable electricity policy. If reports from a conference presentation given by the committee’s chair in April are correct, the results are not kind to the government’s commitment. The ICCC’s analysis seems to suggest the policy will substantially increase the retail price of electricity – by 14% for households and by 39% for industry. Read more

If the electricity sector were art, New Zealand would be “the Mona Lisa.” And countries like Australia, the UK and Germany would rank somewhere behind graffiti. Read more

When governments want to reduce emissions, they have a choice between using policy or price. Policy includes rules – for example, 100% of electricity must be generated from renewables – as well as incentive payments, such as electric vehicle subsidies. Alternatively, governments can price carbon using cap-and-trade, or tax carbon directly. The fact that emissions occur in millions of places in the economy strongly affects the relative performance of policy and price. Read more

Question: What costs three moon programs, puts nobody in space, and makes no difference to emissions? Answer: Energiewende (or energy turnaround), Angela Merkel’s plan to cut Germany’s emissions. Energiewende aims to make Germany the first industrial economy to fully run on renewable energy. The cost so far: 29,000 wind turbines and 1.6 million solar panels for the bargain price of €500 billion. Yes, half a trillion euro. Read more