The Better New Zealand Trust (Better NZ Trust) – a community of drivers, enthusiasts, and advocates who educate New Zealanders about zero carbon renewable energy technology – has expressed significant concerns regarding potential revisions to the Clean Car Standard (CCS), a government initiative aimed at reducing CO2 emissions in the transport sector.
The trust fears that the Ministry of Transport’s review, directed by government stakeholders, might weaken the CCS targets, thereby increasing costs for New Zealand drivers and undermining the country’s emissions reduction goals.
Kathryn Trounson, chairperson of the Better NZ Trust, outlined several risks associated with diluting the CCS targets.
One major concern is that higher CO2 emission targets would make electric vehicles (EVs) less affordable, thus limiting their adoption, the trust said.
“We are concerned that this review, and the bill currently before Parliament, are steps towards watering down the Clean Car Standard,” Trounson said. “This, coming on top of the removal of the Clean Car Discount and the imposition of RUC on EVs, threatens to put EVs out of reach for more New Zealanders, increase the cost of living for families, tie New Zealand into importing fossil fuels for decades to come, make our country a dumping ground for high emissions second-hand vehicles that other countries do not want, [and] make it harder for New Zealand to achieve its emissions reduction goals.”
According to the trust, weakening the CCS targets would lead to a higher cost of living for New Zealand families.
“Higher emission vehicle imports under an ineffective Clean Car Standard would mean a higher cost of living for New Zealand families. Working properly, the Clean Car Standard makes EVs and hybrids more affordable to buy, helping families enjoy the benefits of lower running costs. But if the Clean Car Standards were to be weakened, families would face higher prices and less choice when it comes to low emissions vehicles and inefficient vehicles would be cheaper. That would tie families into spending more on buying petrol and diesel, as they climb ever higher in price, and lock New Zealand into importing oil from overseas at enormous cost for decades to come,” Trounson said.
The trust also highlighted that the repeal of the Clean Car Discount and the imposition of road user charges (RUC) on EVs have already negatively impacted New Zealand’s emissions and increased fuel import costs.
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Trounson said weakening the CCS would exacerbate these issues, making it harder for the country to transition to low-emission transportation and achieve its emissions reduction targets.
“The Clean Car Standard is the last major policy left and, if allowed to work as designed, it will have a strong effect on accelerating the decrease in vehicle emissions in coming years. If, as the makers and importers of gas guzzlers want, the government effectively neutralises the Clean Car Standard, New Zealand will fall further behind other countries in the transition to low emissions transport. We will become the dumping ground for vehicles other countries don’t want, and that will force our households to pay for expensive, imported oil for decades more,” she said.
The Better NZ Trust is calling for the government to consider the long-term impacts of any changes to the CCS.
“There is no merit in any plan to weaken the Clean Car Standard. Indeed, we question whether any weakening of the targets could possibly comply with the requirement set out in the Land Transport Act that targets set by regulation must ‘increase the supply of zero- and low-emission vehicles in the market’ and be ‘consistent with transport-specific policies and strategies set out in the emissions reduction plan,’” Trounson said.
