The Climate Change Response (Emission Trading Reform) Amendment Act (the Act) has now been passed into law. It makes a number of changes to the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ ETS). Read about some of the changes related to forestry.
Forestry decisions
Several decisions have been taken on forestry in the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ ETS). The key forestry changes include:
- introducing average accounting for some post-1989 forests
- creating a new permanent forestry activity in the NZ ETS
- exempting post-1989 forests from the requirement to surrender New Zealand Units to cover emissions from temporary adverse events (such as fire or wind throw)
- allowing some types of post-1989 forestry participants to offset their deforestation liability by planting a forest elsewhere
- improving the pre-1990 forest land offsetting
- some forestry changes are delayed and are included in the supplementary order paper.