7-Nov-2019: New Zealand commits to being Carbon Neutral by 2050
New Zealand lawmakers approved a bill that commits the country to being carbon neutral by the year 2050. The measure, which passed 119 votes to 1, demonstrates the cross-party support that climate protection has in the Pacific island nation.
The Zero Carbon bill aims to provide a framework to implement climate change policies. It's in line with an international effort under the Paris Agreement to limit the global average temperature increase to 1.5° Celsius above preindustrial levels.
New Zealand's bill sets an ambitious target: to reduce all greenhouse gases (except biogenic methane, emitted by plant and animal sources) to net zero by 2050.
The country is well-positioned to hit zero. New Zealand already generates 80% of its electricity from renewables, and that portion will be higher by 2035 as offshore oil and gas are phased out. The government is shifting its fleet to electric vehicles and is working to transition other vehicles to electric, too. The government also has restarted a program to subsidize home insulation and is putting $14.5 billion over the next 10 years into transit, biking and walking infrastructure. In addition, New Zealand has already committed to planting 1 billion trees by 2028.
But that methane loophole is actually a big deal. Methane is different from carbon dioxide. Methane in the atmosphere decays within decades, while CO2 stays in the atmosphere for centuries or longer. But methane is noxious stuff: It traps about 30 times as much heat in the atmosphere as CO2 does.
When it comes to emissions of biogenic methane, New Zealand isn't aiming for net zero. Instead, its goal is to reduce emissions by 10% below 2017 levels by 2030, and then by 24%-47% by 2050.
Agriculture is the largest single source of greenhouse emissions in New Zealand, accounting for 48% of the country's total in 2017. Methane emissions from ruminant animals made up 34% of its total emissions. So by putting those emissions in a separate bucket, New Zealand has made hitting its carbon goals a lot easier.
Ruminant animals such as sheep and cattle release methane as they digest grass and other leaves. There's no easy way to prevent this, but scientists have discovered that adding certain plants to the animals' diet can cut the amount of methane they produce.
Our native forests and wetlands have enormous potential to absorb carbon and protect us from the worst effects of extreme weather. The more we restore wild places and make them resilient to changing climate, the more benefit we'll see.
16-Nov-2019: Germany’s Climate Protection Act
The German parliament passed the Climate Protection Act in an attempt to reach its climate target by 2030. This will be Germany’s first climate action law. With this bill, a price on carbon emissions in the transport and heating sectors will be imposed along with some other measures to combat climate change. Furthermore, lawmakers also supported to hike the prices of domestic and European flight tickets.
Last week, New Zealand passed the Zero-Carbon Law in a bid to comply with its Paris climate accord commitments and become a carbon-neutral nation by the year 2050. However, unlike New Zealand, where the bill was passed with near-unanimous support, the same was not the case with Germany, where the opposition voted against it.
The bill consists of emissions targets for different sectors of the economy such as transport, energy and housing. Furthermore, the German parliament also wants to adopt a legislative package with various instruments for climate change such as a price on the emissions of CO2 on fuel, heating oil and gas. This is because apart from trying to reach its climate targets by 2030, Germany also wants to save over 55 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions compared to 1990.
From 2021, companies that market diesel and petrol, heating oil and natural gas in the country will need to obtain pollution rights for the amount of greenhouse gases they emit. This will be regulated through a national emissions trading mechanism. The cost of these emissions will drive up the cost of using fossil fuels, making the usage of such fuels more expensive for the citizens and hence, discouraging their use and paving the way for climate-friendly technologies.
12-Sep-2019: A case for a differential global carbon tax
Climate change is a global problem, and a global problem needs a global solution. The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report suggests that we, as humankind, might have just over a decade left to limit global warming. The IPCC says total global emissions will need to fall by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050. If these targets are not met, tropical regions of the world, which are densely populated and happen to be mainly concentrated in the global South, are likely to be most negatively affected because of their low altitudes and pre-existing high temperatures. Some impact of this was already felt during the Tamil Nadu water crisis this year.
The global South, which has historically contributed less to the problem (and even at present its per capita carbon emissions are much smaller in comparison to the countries in the global North), happens to be at the receiving end of the lifestyle choices made by the global North. Although time is running out, a genuine global consensus on the mitigation of this problem is unfortunately missing. In the absence of a collective agreement, the environment is becoming the casualty. The bottom line is that both the worlds need to contribute to avert this danger in their self-interest. At the same time, the burden of adjustment cannot be equal when the underlying relationship between the two worlds has been historically unequal (climate injustice funnel). But what is the correct balance in terms of sharing this burden, something which can be politically and juridically just?
A just approach would involve a global sharing of the responsibility among countries according to their respective shares in global emissions. Currently, the most accepted model of mitigating strategy has been the carbon trading process. However, it has its own limitations. Our proposal, a Just Energy Transition (JET), on the contrary, is premised on a sense of global justice in terms of climatic fallouts and the respective contributions of the countries. It will also help the resource-poor developing countries to make the energy transition without having to worry about the finances unduly. Instead, the current experiences of the developing countries point to the contrary.
How can this injustice be corrected while making the planet a better place to live in for future generations? The first priority is to fundamentally change the energy infrastructure, which requires massive investments for the green energy programme across the world. What we propose here in some sense is a new global green deal. But how can it be financed? We suggest that those on the top of the funnel, apart from funding their own energy transition, partially support the transition for the countries at the bottom and this sharing of the burden of development be done in a way which inverts this injustice funnel. For a successful energy transition to greener renewable sources, countries have to spend around 1.5% of their GDP. We propose that the global energy transition be financed through a system of the global carbon tax. Since the total global carbon emissions are 36.1 billion metric tonnes of CO2, this amounts to a global carbon tax of $46.1 per metric tonne.
Who subsidises whom and by how much? Those countries which emit more than the global per capita average pay for their own transition plus fund a part of the energy transition of those who are below this average. So, those at the receiving end of climate injustice are duly compensated for even as the entire world transitions to greener earth as a result of this process of carbon tax sharing. Currently, the global average of carbon emissions is 4.97 metric tonne per capita. All the countries with emissions above this level (68 in all) are “payers” to finance energy transition for ‘beneficiary’ countries (135 in number), which are emitting below this level.
The total amount of “carbon compensation” made by the payer nations comes to around $570 billion. The distribution of this amount across the payer countries is based on their distance from the global average (controlled for their population size). The other side of the same coin is the compensated countries, and the distribution of this fund across them is also based on how lower their emissions are in comparison to the global average. Once you add (subtract) the carbon compensation amount to (from) each of the countries, you get the effective carbon tax for them.
The two top ‘payer’ countries in terms of absolute amounts of transfers are the U.S. and China since their emissions are higher than the global average. What’s interesting is that despite being a payer country, the effective tax rate for the Chinese is lower than the possible universal tax rate of $46.1 per metric tonne and that’s because their own energy transition (1.5% of China’s GDP) plus the global compensation they make requires a tax rate only of $34.4 per metric tonne. So, in that sense, the burden of adjustment is only partially falling on their shoulder and only because they emit more than the global average.
Robin Hood tax: In terms of ‘compensated’ countries, India comes at the top due to its population size and its distance from the global emissions’ average (India has per capita emissions of 1.73 metric tonne). The other suspects are all countries from the global South, but this list springs a few surprises like France, Sweden, and Switzerland. What this tells us is that even high-income countries which have currently kept their per capita emissions low are beneficiaries of this globally-just policy. With China in the first list and some of the first world countries in the second, it’s obvious what this policy wants to achieve. It wants all nations to climb down the emissions ladder without necessarily having to give up on their standard of living. It’s a global green Robin Hood tax!