The 'Zero Carbon' five year emissions budgets to 2035 will have no effect on emissions

I have whipped up another chart for the five-year emissions budgets for 2022 to 2035.

Remember that the first emissions budget is for 2022 to 2025.

The second emissions budget is for 2026 to 2030.

The third emissions budget is for 2031 to 2036.

This shows both the gross budgets (excluding emissions from land use and forestry and the net budgets (including emissions from land use and forestry).

Where is the 'fat' in the budget? It's in the carbon removals from forestry and landuse in the 2022 to 2025 net budget.

If we look at the Climate Change Commission's breakdown of its recommended budget, we see that they budget for 6.6 million tonnes of emissions in CO²-e for removals or sequestration of carbon from the forests and landuse sector. That's a lowball number.

In calendar year 2020, the official Greenhouse Gas Inventory reports 23 million tonnes of carbon removals from the forests and landuse sector. That's almost four times the annual budget amount.

Aotearoa sets course to net-zero with first three emissions budgets which are simply underwhelming

James Shaw announced today announced today the five-year emissions budgets for 2022 to 2035 in a media statement Aotearoa sets course to net-zero with first three emissions budgets.

The emissions budgets are;

• 2022–2025: 290 million tonnes
• 2026–2030: 305 million tonnes
• 2031–2035: 240 million tonnes

So I put the emissions budgets and their annual equivalents on a graph along with the latest actual gross and net emissions from the Greenhouse Gas Inventory from 1990 up to 2020.

Did you notice in his statement James Shaw only uses the word 'emissions'? He does not specify if he means gross emissions or net emissions.

Under the Climate Change Response Act the emissions budgets are expressly defined as net emissions. However, there is a conflicting section in the Act stating that the Climate Change Commission may advise the Government on "the rules that will apply to measure progress towards meeting emissions budgets" This was one of the issues the Lawyers For Climate Change Action raised in their recent judicial review of the Commissions advice.

If we take the 2022 to 2025 budget of 290 million tonnes of net emissions and divide by four year we get 72 million tonnes for budget 2025. Comparing the 72 million tonnes of net emissions with 2020's 55.5 million tonnes that is a whopping great increase on 2020 net emissions of 16.5 million tonnes or thirty percent!

If we take the 2031 to 2035 budget of 240 million tonnes of net emissions and divide by five we get 48 million tonnes for 2035. Comparing the 48 million tonnes of net emissions with 1990's 44 million tonnes, that is still an increase on 1990 net emissions of nine percent!

So the three emissions budgets don't even represent reductions in emissions against any historic actual emissions baseline. I find the ambition of these five year budgets utterly underwhelming