Greenpeace attacks Govt emissions trading scheme

Greenpeace has commissioned a report on the proposed NZ Emissions Trading Scheme.

Now I blogged last Friday on how the Flexible Land Use Alliance warned that the proposed scheme would lock up land into uneconomic uses, and could cost billions of dollars. Almost every party in Parliament has backed their compromise option.

So what does Greenpeace have to say? Are they defending the proposed scheme? Let’s read the report and see what their summary is:

The current proposal for the structure of the ETS will deliver no significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, will act as an impediment to the rapid implementation of less carbon intensive production technologies in the manufacturing industry and will do nothing to slow the destruction of forests to make way for increasingly greenhouse gas intensive forms of dairy farming.

They then ask Will the NZ ETS deliver significant emission reductions?

The simple answer to this question is no.

Wow that’s a blunt answer.  The ETS simply won’t work in reducing emissions significantly.  And what will it cost?

If emissions growth is at the higher end of the Treasury forecasts then, at a world price of $25 per tonne, New Zealand would need to import at least $3.1 billion worth of emission permits.

So Greenpeace are saying the ETS will cost NZ $3.1 billion and it won’t actually significantly reduce emissions.  Ummm, doesn’t that mean if Greenpeace are correct, you’d have to be pretty crazy to implement such a scheme?