Let’s start with agriculture, which accounts for nearly half of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions, largely methane from livestock. Despite earlier promises to include agriculture in the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) by 2025, the coalition has delayed this to 2030, bowing to pressure from farming lobbyists. This exemption, plus other pro-farming policies that will increase pollution, ensures that the sector responsible for 43.5% of our current methane emissions faces no real accountability.
The 2025 Budget, which will make any reductions harder to achieve, is a grim reflection of the government’s cowardice to curb agricultural emissions in any meaningful way. Instead, it allocates $200 million to fossil fuel developments at gas fields while slashing $56 million for electric buses. They're also cutting $100 million from climate resilience projects for the Pacific. Meanwhile, the coalition scrapped incentives for electric vehicles and cycleways, undermining low-emission transport. Then there’s the government’s losing bet on the lame horse that is carbon capture.
In May, RNZ reported:
The CCS project - led by Todd Energy and backed by the government - aims to capture carbon dioxide from industrial processes and inject it deep underground in Taranaki, at the Kapuni gas field, locking it away for centuries.
The start date has been pencilled in for around 2027, and from then until 2030 it is expected to store a million tonnes of CO₂, with a further almost million tonnes stored over the following five years.
It is a big part of the government's broader plan to meet its legal obligations to cut emissions by 2030 - about a third of the carbon savings needed.
But Gibson tells The Detail the project's future is now uncertain unless Todd Energy gets "more money or less liability or a combination [of both]".
"There is a whole raft of things that have changed, one is the carbon price is low compared to other countries ... then there is the issue of the liability regime, so if there is a leak 15 years after you have filled up a field and closed it off, who is responsible for that ... so there is wrangling going on around the rules."
Globally, CCS has a mixed track record. Some projects, like Norway's Sleipner, have stored CO₂ safely for decades. Others have failed spectacularly, costing billions and storing less than promised.
Nicola Willis’ austerity budget also fails to bolster the ETS, which excludes agriculture and relies on a flawed cap that doesn’t prioritise gross emissions reductions. Instead, it pours funds into unproven carbon capture and sequestration technologies that are just pipe dreams. The Climate Change Commission projections showed the government won’t deliver any meaningful cuts, rendering younger generations to a future of climate chaos. Christopher Luxon's idiotic approach bets on “immature technologies” that may never be commercially viable, wasting resources that could be better spent on already consented solar and wind projects that are waiting in the wings.
Internationally, New Zealand’s backsliding is raising eyebrows. Our free trade agreements with the EU and UK, which include robust climate commitments, are at risk. The EU-NZ FTA, for instance, explicitly ties trade to Paris Agreement obligations, yet our reversal of the offshore oil and gas exploration ban and failure to cut agricultural emissions could breach these terms.
Breaching our FTA climate commitments could cripple New Zealand’s export sectors, with estimated losses of $1-$2 billion annually. Agriculture, contributing $29 billion to exports in 2023, faces the greatest risk. Dairy and meat exports to the EU, valued at $5.2 billion, could see tariff reinstatements costing $435-$870 million yearly, while trade disputes and penalties might add hundreds of millions more. Reputational damage in climate-conscious markets like the EU and UK could further erode demand for our “clean, green” products, threatening the economic backbone of our nation.
Climate campaigners, like 350.org Aotearoa, have slammed the coalition’s
“pathetic” 2035 NDC target (51-55% emissions cuts below 2005 levels,
barely a 1-5% improvement over the 2030 goal) calling it a “disgrace”
compared to the UK’s 81% cut. But it’s not just New Zealand
organisations that are noticing the National-led government’s climate
failures.
On Tuesday, RNZ reported:
The prime minister has dismissed international climate scientists as "worthies" for criticising the government's approach to methane.
But the Green Party says New Zealand appears to be on a "climate denial bandwagon" and needs to end the speculation over what it plans to do about the country's single biggest source of emissions.
Christopher Luxon received a letter from 26 international climate change scientists accusing the government of "ignoring scientific evidence" over plans to lower its methane target.
New Zealand has one of the highest per-capita methane rates in the world because of its farming exports and the current target is reducing methane by between 24 and 47 percent by 2050.
Farmer lobby groups are demanding the government lower the target, and back away from any plans to put a price on methane.
What’s even worse, the government’s rhetoric is once again flirting with climate denial like the science isn't already settled. Coalition of chaos Minister’s have recently downplayed methane’s impact, with Agriculture Minister Todd McClay dismissing offshore carbon credits, saying they are unnecessary despite an 84-million-tonne shortfall in our Paris targets.
The government's head-in-the-sand approach not only impacts our potential for a clean and green economy but tarnishes our global image, which will affect not just our export sector, but also our already struggling tourism industry as well. The world is noticing, and New Zealand’s climate inaction will cost us dearly, both environmentally and economically.
