Government loosens range of climate rules, pushing out target for public sector by 25 years

Wednesday, 5 November 2025

The Government quietly announced a huge shift in climate policy on Tuesday evening, including a 25-year delay to a public sector climate goal and the de-linking of the Emissions Trading Scheme from the Paris climate pact.

The changes were included at the bottom of a press release put out at 8pm on a Government website but not emailed to all political journalists, as ministerial press releases generally are.

Overall the changes to the Climate Change Response Act loosen the rules that prior governments have set in order to force future emission reductions.

The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), the main tool the Government uses to reduce emissions by setting a price on them, will be de-linked to the Paris climate target, as the requirement for it to accord to New Zealand’s “Nationally Determined Contribution” will be removed.

This means New Zealand will be able to purchase offshore credits to meet this international commitment, rather than reducing the emissions needed within New Zealand.

The Climate Change Minister is currently required to update the ETS settings every year based on advice from the independent Climate Change Commission ‒ this is being changed to every two years.

The commission itself, set up by the last Government under the Zero Carbon Act that National supported, is also losing power - the Government is removing the requirement that it provide advice on policy direction ahead of governments developing their required emissions reductions plans. These are the plans the government is legally required to make in order to meet its goals under the Zero Carbon Act.

Separately, the Government has pushed out a goal for the public sector itself to be “carbon neutral” from this year to 2050.

Climate Change Minister Simon Watts said the changes were about removing complexity, not lowering ambition.

“These proposed changes will reduce costs to government and business and provide greater certainty, enabling us to make meaningful reductions more efficiently. They do not lower our ambition,” Watts said.

Advice released proactively showed that the Climate Change Commission itself was worried about New Zealand’s ability to meet its 2030 Paris goal entirely domestically, warning that this would be “highly disruptive”.

Watts refused to estimate how much money the Government would have to spend offshore to meets its Paris goals - something an earlier Treasury estimate suggested would cost between $3 and $24 billion.

“2030 is not tomorrow. We've got five or so years between … between now and then. Technology is evolving very fast at the moment,” Watts said.

He also refused to comment on the fact that the ETS market immediately reacted to the announcement by dropping the price of carbon by around 10%, suggesting market participants believed the Government was not as serious about reducing emissions.

Watts said the change to the public sector goal recognised that 2025 was too soon for the Government’s operations to be carbon neutral, but maintained that public servants would still work towards a 2050 target, despite how far away it was.

Green Party co-leader and climate spokeswoman Chlöe Swarbrick said the Government had announced “sweeping changes” to climate change law under the cover of night.

“You cannot trust the National Party. They supported the cross-partisan Zero Carbon Act and now, in Government, are stripping the Climate Change Commission of its powers,” Swarbrick said.

“Christopher Luxon promised New Zealanders he would abide by our climate commitments. In Government, he’s shown himself a liar by halving methane emissions targets, and now removing consideration of meeting the Paris Agreement from Emissions Trading Scheme settings, while making it easier to hand out taxpayer money to polluting corporations.”

Swarbrick said the Government wasn’t being honest about the “billions” it would cost to meet the Paris 2030 target through offshore emissions reduction purchases.

Lisa McLaren, the co-director of climate NGO 350 Aotearoa and a key voice behind the campaign for the original Zero Carbon Act, said the Government was “gagging” independent advice that showed its climate plans did not add up.

“This Government knows its climate plans don’t stack up — so it is gagging the very body designed to hold it accountable. National once proudly voted for a strong, independent Climate Commission. Today, they are ripping a knife through the only bipartisan climate lifeboat we have,” McLaren said.

A spokeswoman for Watts’ office said the press release had been put out at night as it was market sensitive, and had been sent to a targeted group of stakeholders.

The Government recently announced another change to climate change laws that remove many companies from the need to make climate-related disclosures, lowering the number of companies in the system to 76.