Emissions pricing with Professor David Frame: Let’s talk about what the science means for our sector
Channel: Beef + Lamb New Zealand
Date: 2022-12-06

Professor David Frame is a world leader in the science of climate change and its application in policy, with significant knowledge of New Zealand’s agricultural sector. In this video, recorded at a farmer meeting in Invercargill in November 2022, he explains the science behind emissions, warming, targets, metrics such as GWP* and GWP100, and what it all means in terms of farming’s role in responding to international agreements and to a changing climate. Professor Frame is Director of the New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute at Victoria University of Wellington.

TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Introduction and Background from Beef + Lamb New Zealand Chair Andrew Morrison.
4:01 Professor Dave Frame: Agricultural climate policy – things to fight about; things not to fight     about. Some background on the He Waka Eke Noa process and proposal. 
7:40 Technical Session: Planetary energy balance; Energy in the Climate System; The sun and earth as black bodies; Solar spectrum comparisons; Line width and forcing; Trace quantities can matter; Temporary substances can have an impact. 
17:29 Questions and Answers: Carbon dioxide (CO2) cycling by ruminants; carbon in wool and soil; CO2 cycles in earth’s atmosphere; the difference between CO2 and methane from ruminants for warming
27:15 More technical information: Flow pollution and stock pollution; CO2 residence time in the atmosphere; decay of CO2 over time
33:12 Emissions metrics: GWP100, GTP(100), and GWP* - why they were developed, what they compare, what they apply to.
42:02 Environmental integrity: GWP100 is ambiguous re warming; Impact is different for different gases, they need reported separately.
46:37 Comparison of warming emissions metrics against the actual record of global warming. The accuracy of GWP* vs other metrics. 
51:31 Warming and ‘net zero’; GWP* properly reflects warming
57:05 The reference year matters; a full account requires the relevant time-series
1:01:09 NZ agricultural sector’s contribution to warming
1:04:35 Global emissions under 2 scenarios
1:06:58 Questions: understand that GWP* cant really be used at individual farm level; could it be made simpler? Should we be looking at individual farm level rather than sector? 
1:12:27 Cleanest way to deal with individual farm reporting is on a weight of gas, for each gas, basis. GWP* is not great for many farms that have just started or expanded area. Price per kg is simpler.
1:14:43 Policy options: manage short-lived gases separately
1:16:28 Reflections on NZ’s journey: two-basket approach not well understood by many close to Government and NGOs; confusion between targets and policy architectures
1:18:30 Recap: Agricultural climate policy; why going into the ETS is a bad outcome for agriculture.
1:29:03 Questions and Answers, for Dave and Andrew: Benchmark dates for warming; Life Cycle Analysis reporting; new technologies; Nitrous oxide; Alternative proteins; B+LNZ position on targets; Impact of tree plantings; carbon release from wild fires; policy decisions between methane and fossil carbon; how settled is climate science
1:54:12 Wrap up, by Andrew and Dave. The achievement of getting a split gas approach; the political consensus on paying a price on agriculture’s emissions in NZ.