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

As the Interim Climate Change Commission decides how to implement the government’s commitment to 100% renewable electricity generation by 2035, it could learn from the renewables policy disaster unfolding in Germany. Read more

Minister for Climate Change James Shaw this week announced that a package of incentives to buy electrical vehicles will arrive soon. The package will join other climate change measures, including a recent proposal to tighten up New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). The principal benefit of an ETS is the discovery of least-cost ways to abate emissions. A 2013 OECD study showed it can cost 17 times more to abate a tonne of carbon by using government subsidies than by... Read more

“Siri, give me directions to the airport.” After a long couple of days of meetings in Auckland it was time to head home. The reply from my smartphone was immediate. “What time do you call this?” Wait, what? “Siri. Give me directions. To the airport.” “Matt, economic growth is one of five important drivers of living standards. Let’s finish that report you’ve been working on.” This new Living Standards Framework upgrade for Siri, based on work by the experts in... Read more