Chambers’ Submission on Climate Change

The Wellington Regional Chamber of Commerce has called for urgent action on climate change but warned against proposals that impact negatively on New Zealand’s international competitiveness.

Along with the New Zealand Chambers of Commerce, its submission in response to the Government’s suite of energy and climate change papers says that it is imperative that a global consensus be achieved on how emissions are to be reduced, and that New Zealand policy should not be finalised until the time when such a consensus is achieved.

“Because of the impact on New Zealand’s international competitiveness, the Chamber would not support the introduction of a greenhouse gas charge or emissions trading ahead of such action from our trading partners”, said Wellington Chamber CEO, Charles Finny.

“This does not mean that the Chamber is suggesting inaction. Far from it. We believe that business and Government should be working even more closely in this area.

“Immediate action can still occur but it must be restricted to activities that do not impose excessive economic costs on New Zealand. For example, we support increased investment in education and research, and the immediate application of technology where this is available, preparing for future policies by collecting data and increasing the capacity of major emitters to measure their emissions. We also think that New Zealand should move fast to join the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6) – a grouping which includes Japan, China, Korea, India, US and Australia.

“Higher energy costs resulting from climate change policies would be detrimental to New Zealand’s international competitiveness if our trading partners did not face the same measures. If economic activity shifted offshore in response to higher domestic costs of production and distribution it would be bad for our economy - yet importantly, global emissions would not be reduced at all. In fact global emissions might increase if emissions-producing economic activity were to shift from New Zealand to an economy with more lenient climate change policies. For this reason particular care needs to be taken on any transitional, pre-2012 decisions for the stationary energy sector.

“New Zealand cannot influence the rest of the world by moving ahead of the pack. New Zealand can achieve the most by participating fully in the international debate and encouraging other countries to take action but it should not take punitive action on itself unilaterally,” Mr Finny concluded.

Aside from the above, the New Zealand Chambers of Commerce submission said:

“NZCCI welcomes the work done by Government in these areas and for the opportunity to submit on these important papers. However, we are concerned that:

• all these papers have come out at essentially the same time and that they have the same deadline for submissions;
• solutions are canvassed without rigorous or any cost benefit calculations having taken place;
• New Zealand appears to be contemplating action on regulation or trading mechanisms ahead of an international agreement being achieved on these;
• implications for the wider economy do not play a larger role in these discussion documents;
• subsequent to the release of these discussion documents, the government has announced significant new policy commitment to New Zealand becoming carbon neutral, again without a cost benefit analysis.”

Ends

© Scoop Media