Ekos is welcoming today’s statement by Forestry Minister Todd McClay on supporting the forest sector and the government’s removal of a service fee on all forests registered in the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZETS).

“This is a good day for native forests. By removing this crazy service fee on native forests in the NZETS we can now restore more habitat with carbon funding”, Ekos CEO Sean Weaver said.

Ekos specialises in using carbon credit revenues to pay for restorative forestry projects. In this way it can finance forest conservation without needing government grants or philanthropy. Ekos forest restoration projects have been hampered in recent years by changing government policy and a new service fee imposed in 2023.

“I could never understand why the government encouraged native plantings one minute and the next minute would financially penalise native projects and make them harder to get off the ground”, Weaver said.

“Native reforestation projects are financially difficult enough as it is because native trees tend to grow quite slowly. But this service fee – we called it the ‘MPI Bull**** Tax’ in our spreadsheets – just made everything much worse and stopped many of our projects from being financially possible,” he said.

“Our landscapes and rivers, and our biodiversity need all the financial help they can get, and removing this perplexing charge is a step in the right direction,” Weaver said.

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