13% Agricultural Emissions Cut Possible Today – At A Profit
April 8th, 2009
The Sustainability Council has told the Emissions Trading Scheme Select Committee NZ is wasting the opportunity to make a major and profitable cut in its emissions from agriculture almost immediately. Based on analysis from an August 2008 report by the globally respected emissions reduction consultancy, ICF International, the Council’s executive director, Simon Terry, concludes “the agriculture sector is easily NZ’s best source of emission reductions.”
ICF International conducted the report for MAF, and it was released under the Official Information Act. Terry says it dispels “the convenient untruth that pastoral farmers have no cost-effective options to reduce their GHG’s. ICF estimates (agriculture) accounts for 73% of the potential for emissions reductions across the economy that cost less than $40 per tonne in 2010.” As well as being profitable, these measures could be implemented in time to help reduce NZ’s Kyoto Protocol emissions bill, which will come due at the end of the first Kyoto Commitment Period, in 2012.
With perhaps 75% of the potential which is economic to implement sitting with the agricultural sector, the current policy of exempting agriculture from Kyoto liabilities until 2013 makes no sense. The ICF report identified the largest, cost-effective, immediate savings available could come from the use of nitrification inhibitors, followed by significant contributions from standoff pads, the use of the anti-biotic Monensin in the dairy and cattle herds, and the liquid urea inhibitor Agrotain in the sheep and beef herds. Terry says “in total, 5.4mt is available annually at a profit overall. At a carbon price of $30 per tonne, its value is nearly $500 million.”
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