Brownlee Gerry: Climate Change (Emissions Trading and Renewable Preference) Bill — First Reading 
Brownlee Gerry: Climate Change (Emissions Trading and Renewable Preference) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:644;Page:13795] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam) 
: 
 I will follow the comments made by my colleague the Hon Nick Smith in response to the Minister’s speech earlier this afternoon because he very clearly articulated National’s position and our concerns. We are committed to going through the select committee process in order to ensure that New Zealand gets a very good climate change and emissions trading regime. It was disappointing therefore hear the second speaker for the Government sound again a little petty about how people get themselves to any particular position. I would be quite within my rights to say that the Government is only now after 8 years getting to where National was back in 1999. 
The tragedy is that we have seen an extraordinary deforestation of this country over the past few years. The very Minister who is criticising the position taken by us—which is in favour of this bill I might add—is the person who has presided over the felling of some 15 million trees in the last 2 years and who this year in 2007 has presided over some 30000 hectares of New Zealand forests being cut down and not replaced. That has to be a concern to anybody who looks at New Zealand’s emissions profile. I agree with him that we have to do something because of the reliance we have on the world’s demand for agricultural products from our country. If we do not have a tidy carbon footprint then we are likely to see a degree of stress probably significant stress in the markets we need to access in order to sustain our lifestyle in this country. 
One of my other responsibilities is in the area of energy and I want to make a couple of comments about the way that this bill is supposed to fit in with the Government’s Energy Strategy. The Energy Strategy was produced after a long gestation and I think it was somewhat of a disappointing document inasmuch as it talks about a whole lot of concepts and has some very very challenging goals in it but does not talk about the practicalities and realities that will face this country in meeting the energy needs of its citizens and in trying to comply with a regime that demands we reduce the carbon dioxide emission profile from that sector. 
The only thing I take comfort in is that the emissions trading system should see encouragement for some fuel substitution inside the energy market particularly around fossil fuels and it should see we would hope more renewable generation come into play. But as my colleague Dr Smith pointed out every time that this Government has had an opportunity to support a sizable renewable energy project it has found some reason to knock it over. That has to be the ultimate irony that works against the credentials it is trying to claim as a Government that is keen on looking after the environment. 
Some serious questions need to be answered in the select committee process and not the least of those when it comes to energy concerns the definition of security of supply. If we look at the demand curve for electricity in this country we see that the Government has massively underestimated what it is likely to be. Currently if we read the Energy Strategy we learn that it says there will be about half a percent of demand growth every year. But we know that historically that rate has been well ahead of 2 percent. There is a suggestion there that energy conservation will make up the difference. Well that is highly unlikely in our view. As Dr Smith pointed out the dependence that New Zealand now has on thermal generation means that the challenge to get back to a higher level of renewable generation is even greater than it was some short years ago. 
Not only do we want to know what the definition is for security of supply but we are fascinated to know what non-baseload thermal generation actually means. Right now every bit of thermal generation capacity in this country is running unless it is designated as reserve. Here we are heading into the warmer months of our climate but we still have thermal generation running at peak loads. So what is non-baseload generation? At the moment every little bit we have is in fact baseload generation. 
We would also like to know in looking at the exemptions provisions of the bill set out in clause 60 right through to clause 62 what will trigger some exemptions being granted. Will it be a price signal? If there is a price trigger can New Zealanders look forward to massively increased electricity prices? I for one do not accept that we need to have rising prices in an environment where we are reducing our greenhouse gas emissions from our electrical-energy sector. I think there are things we can do. One of the aspects of the energy portfolio is the scarcity of electricity. If it was not in scarce supply we would not be seeing some of the dramatic price rises that we have seen over the past few years. 
So there is a real challenge here to have a better regime for renewable energy to be fed into the grid and to be developed and for some sensible legislation around the role that thermal generation will play in supporting that. People will be aware I hope that Contact Energy has a $1 billion project for the development of a very very large wind farm on the west coast of the North Island just below Auckland. The company has made it very clear that it will have to back up that big wind farm with a smaller amount of thermal capacity. That brings us back round in a circle and causes us to ask what security of supply is as a definition and what non-baseload generation is as a definition. We want to know those two things. We also want to know whether a price signal will trigger the exemption process or whether it will just be a matter of whoever is the Minister of the day making up his or her mind about what that means. 
Another interesting aspect of this bill is the fact that we see nothing in it that talks about how New Zealand might better develop carbon stores. We heard Minister Anderton talking about various projects around the place but as we have said some of the biggest carbon stores in this country have been completely knocked over and taken out in the last couple of years. There is no suggestion from the Government in this bill that we are to look at how we might measure the improved carbon store in the country’s pastures or how we might encourage the agricultural sector to get some benefit from improved soils—making the effort to improve carbon sequestration effectively in the improved soils. Also there is no suggestion that active work will be done by the Government of the day whichever Government it may be to ensure that we have soil stabilisation. Much of Mr Anderton’s speech made mention of it but sadly none of what he was talking about is reflected in this bill. 
Our commitment is to travel with this bill into the select committee supporting it and then we will pick up on what the Hon Trevor Mallard said today. He said that the Government wants to consult widely and that it wants to work closely with all of those who have an interest in New Zealand’s future particularly with regard to climate change because there is no doubt that we cannot separate what we do to mitigate against climate change and what we do to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions profile from what our future economic prospects will be. We accept that the Minister is saying in good faith today that he wants to work with us and we make that commitment as we support this bill going to a select committee.