Petition is successful with 3,445 signatures
To: The Environment Select Committee
Stop the government giving millions more free carbon credits to polluters!
Thanks to all your signatures and sharing of the ETS petition, we won the campaign to remove Clause 15. Change IS possible!
You can read more about the win here: https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/132760791/government-kills-pollution-loophole-that-was-great-for-cucumber-growers-but-terrible-for-the-climate
This win shows how much we care about having a strong Emissions Trading Scheme to drive bold climate action in New Zealand.
🌏 Climate action requires that we all do our bit to reduce emissions. But under the current settings of the Emissions Trading Scheme, the Government gives our country’s largest polluting companies free carbon credits, which stops them from paying the full price for their pollution.
💩 Even worse, a bill before the Environment Select Committee proposes to hand out millions more free credits to big polluters, which would reduce the price they pay to pollute, and this means even fewer reasons to decarbonise. Meanwhile, ordinary kiwis are paying the full price for their own carbon pollution in their grocery prices and fuel.
🔥 In a climate crisis, we need to phase out these free credits given out to New Zealand’s largest industrial polluters, NOT hand out even more free carbon credits worth millions of dollars!
🎯 Specifically, we call upon The Environment Select Committee to make the following changes to the Climate Change Response (Late Payment Penalties and Industrial Allocation) Amendment Bill:
• Delete Clause 15 which gives even more companies free carbon credits, and could give an increased amount to some existing companies.
• Support the other parts of the Bill that reduce the excessive free credits that companies have received in the past.
• Add a clause to prohibit any new companies from getting free carbon credits
• Increase the phase-out rate of free carbon credits to 15% a year, so that subsidies to polluters end before 2030.
If these critical extra changes aren’t made in this Bill, the Committee should launch a process to properly reform and phase out free allocation before 2030. Tell us when and how real change will happen.
Why is this important?
This year we have experienced climate chaos firsthand with three devastating climate related storms in three weeks. The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is New Zealand’s biggest tool to reduce climate pollution. But a new law going through Parliament aiming to update the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) could in fact allow even more pollution.
A new clause adds in a mechanism to “reevaluate” which companies qualify for free carbon credits (Industrial allocations ) which could drastically increase the number of companies which get a free pass to pollute. It could also give some companies an increased number of free credits! What’s more, this whole scheme of free credits was originally meant to be phased out by 2030 but now this bill is proposing to enlarge the scheme and hand out even more free passes to pollute!
For example, what could this Bill mean for a company like Fonterra? Fonterra’s lactose and whey manufacturing currently gets free credits to cover 57% of its emissions. Under this Bill, this could potentially increase to 87% free, and those extra free credits would be worth around $2M per year! But that’s not all. Fonterra’s other manufacturing operations like milk drying don’t currently qualify at all, but might under the changes in this Bill. Those operations emit over 1 MILLION tonnes a year, so if they did qualify, the extra free credits could be worth tens of millions of dollars annually…
🔥🌏 This is absolutely unacceptable in a climate crisis. 🌏🔥
Please sign our petition to
• stop the Bill’s backward steps giving even more companies free credits and increasing the amount given to some companies
• change the Bill to ban any new companies from getting free passes to pollute and to phase the free credit scheme out faster for existing companies.
• Support the parts of the bill which do cut back insanely high free emission credits some companies have received.
Thanks,
Emily & Tim (Climate Club & Coal Action Network Aotearoa)
How it will be delivered
We'll add your signatures and any comments as part of our submission to the Environment Select Committee by Coal Action Network Aotearoa and Climate Club (submissions close on 6 April).
These organisations will appear in person at the Select Committee’s hearings to make the case on your behalf.
If you’d like to submit yourself to the Environment Select Committee, an easy guide can be found here: https://bit.ly/submit-ets