By Catherine Leining, Policy Fellow, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research
In September 2018, the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ ETS) marked its first decade of operation. I was part of the core group of government officials who designed the system back in 2007 and 2008. Since then, I have continued to work both inside and outside of government to advance its progress. Having decided that the dramatic story of heartbreak and hope deserved nothing less than a little musical theatre, I filmed a
short musical tribute on my iPhone. It made its debut at a birthday party for the NZ ETS at the Ministry for the Environment, and was posted online for fun together with a
media release from Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
The idea came to me when I was washing the dinner dishes and puzzling over how to help people understand the story of what happened. Say the words "emissions trading" and many people glaze over and tune out. Most of the rest of them say something about "dodgy carbon credits," recalling how our emission price dropped very close to zero because of unlimited overseas units. The system has had no significant impact so far on domestic greenhouse gas emissions by the government's own admission. It has taken most of a decade for the emission price to recover to the point where we started.
