This report, produced by the Morgan Foundation, shows that New Zealand was by far the biggest buyer of fraudulent foreign carbon credits from the Ukraine.
Now the Government is handing over these fraudulent credits to meet our international emissions reduction targets.
Executive Summary
The Government’s plan for meeting our Kyoto Protocol commitment and 2020 emissions reduction target was released late last year. Underlying this plan is a shocking truth: New Zealand has been a willing participant in a wholesale climate fraud.
This report explores this issue in greater detail and establishes three key facts:
- One type of Kyoto carbon credit (the Emission Reduction Unit) was overcome by fraud and corruption in Ukraine and Russia. Virtually all of the credits issued by these countries are ‘hot air’ – they do not represent true emissions reductions.
- Proportional to our emissions, New Zealand has been by far the largest purchaser of these Ukrainian and Russian credits through our Emissions Trading Scheme. This was due to deliberate decisions by the National-led Government to – unlike any other country – continue allowing unlimited use of these and other foreign credits for as long as the international community let us.
- Our Government now plans to knowingly utilise all these fraudulent credits so it can claim we are meeting our international obligations through to at least 2020. Meanwhile our actual emissions continue to grow in excess of our targets.
This fraud has had several nasty side-effects:
- It sent the price of carbon units in our Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) to virtually zero, hammering our nascent carbon forestry industry.
- We have seen wholesale conversions of land to dairy, such as the massive Wairakei Pastoral estate managed by State Owned Enterprise Landcorp.
- We have put around $200 million in the hands of foreign criminals simply to avoid our ethical obligation to reduce emissions. There has been no environmental benefit when that money could have been used to reduce emissions here.
In addition, some companies were issued free units by our Government while also being able to exploit the cheap, fraudulent foreign credits. In other words, they have been able to profit from their pollution at the expense of the rest us.
Download Report
Extracted from http://morganfoundation.org.nz/new-report-climate-cheats/ – 18 April 2016
[See also the very relevant article entitled NZ to spend $14 Billion to meet Paris Agreement Targets]