Barn-fed animals will have far lower emissions than NZ produced meat: Rod Carr

Jeremy Rose: We know that the world should eat less meat and consume fewer dairy products. We also know that dairy products and meat can be a healthy part of people’s diets and that New Zealand produces those products with among the world’s lowest carbon emissions. But it’s also true that the world doesn’t need a lot of our products. Babies in China and elsewhere would actually be better off drinking breast milk than Fonterra’s formula. 

 

Is there a case for New Zealand companies to go out and promote responsible consumption?

 

Rod Carr: There’s a few statements there which are worth teasing out. New Zealand, using ruminant pastoral livestock agriculture, is one of the most efficient producers of meat and milk protein in the world in terms of its emissions profile. 

 

But just remember what I said: ruminant pastoral livestock agriculture. It is increasingly obvious that you can create meat and milk protein with lower total emissions using different farming practices. 

  

For example, the Europeans have approved feed supplements, which when fed on a regular basis to barn raised cows and beef cattle reduces their biogenic methane emissions by in the order of 80%. 

 

Now, because they have a different farming practice, i.e, animals in barns, they are going to have much lower emissions per kilo of meat and milk protein than New Zealand.

Best in subclass

 

We may be best in our subclass, but our subclass may ultimately be unattractive because there are other ways of doing it. In New Zealand, we assume that the animals are happiest when standing in the rain and wind outside. This is not true. I think we will get a hybrid form of animal husbandry in New Zealand, where more of our animals spend more of their time in a barn. And while in the barn, we may be able to supplement their feed for times of the year. And even if you only have the animal in the barn for four months of the year with supplements that reduce their emissions by 80% during that period, that is still a 25% reduction in annual biogenic methane emissions. 

 

So I think we’re gonna see changes in farming practices already. The heat in the north of the North Island means that dairy herds need shade, you need to protect them from the sun, and that barn is where they may well eat. It’s where you can supplement their feed. 

 

We know that breeding can reduce biogenic methane emissions from livestock and pastoral settings. We do know that feed supplements can reduce biogenic methane from animals in barn settings. And that’s before you get into the alternatives such as boluses, and new feed types, and alternative ways of making protein. 

 

I think all of that goes to that point of we may be best in class, but in a class that is rapidly changing.

Secondly, it is true that the world is going to need more protein, there’s more people, and people don’t get enough in many parts of the world today. 

 

There is a global shortage of protein for humans. We have specialised though in not feeding the hungry poor. We specialise in feeding the relatively wealthy, and in many cases, those who already have all they need as a daily allowance of protein. 

 

We don’t feed the world; we never intended to

 

So I think we need to be careful about our assumption that the developing world sees New Zealand’s methane emissions as quote, “feeding the world”. We don’t and we never intended to.

 

The next thing I would say is that I think that the red meat industry will be challenged in the future. Thirty percent of the under 30s in the UK eat red meat rarely, if ever. And now 17% of adult New Zealanders eat red meat rarely if ever. So there’s changing consumer preferences in the markets that we value most highly. 

 

New Zealand needs to look forward to the future and see the opportunities, rather than assume that because we are as good as we are at what we’ve done in the past, that will protect us in the future. 

 

Finally, on [carbon] leakage. The Commission’s conclusion is that there is a high degree of uncertainty about whether leakage occurs and if it does, to what extent. And the more countries who have NDCs [nationally determined contributions] that become binding on their emissions, the less likely it is that reducing emissions in New Zealand will be compensated by increasing emissions in a foreign country. 

 

Product substitution is much more likely, particularly in meat protein, less so in dairy protein. If we don’t produce lamb, it’s not that the British will farm more sheep. It’s that British consumers are likely to consume chicken or pork instead.

Rooftop solar a no brainer

 

Australia has been reporting record after record in roof-top solar energy production. Should the government be doing more to encourage people to purchase roof top solar?

 

The economics of solar are now such it doesn’t need government subsidies. The barriers to more rapid uptake of solar are regulatory barriers and technology constraints on the grid and the lines.

 

So I am not a fan of government subsidies for solar, when the commercial viability of solar is now proven. 

 

And the other issues are the ones we need to address, such as making sure that the regulatory barriers are as low as possible, that the cost of connecting to lines and grids is accessible and affordable and appropriate, those are all choices we can make now with known technology and a known regulatory environment.

 

Residential rooftop solar is in some cases an absolute no brainer. And now that the banks are providing top-up mortgage finance for those who want to put solar on the roof, and buy EVs and replace fossil fuel space heating, with heat pump technology, essentially, the banks are sharing the benefits on the other side with the consumers who will now have lower energy bills for ever. 

 

I think that the financial system and households, where appropriate, will do rooftop solar, for use behind the meter. And that pays for itself in about eight years. So all of that works now without subsidy. 

 

But only about a third of New Zealand houses are good for rooftop solar, because they either face the wrong way or they’re overhung by trees or neighbour’s height and, and, and. That still gives you quite a lot of work to do to create the opportunity for a third of New Zealand homes to benefit from rooftop solar.

 

We’re also seeing large scale, industrial use of solar.  Todd energy, I think, has been up and down the country looking at the large roof spaces for supermarkets, malls, you know, warehouses, stuff like that.

 

So again, no need for subsidies. The economics of all of that work. And now solar farms are beginning to look like they can be deployed profitably with established technology. The challenge for solar is intermittency. The sun does not shine in the night and the moon does not give the lumens that you need. So from that point of view, battery technology and how do you store intermittency and that I think is where the next breakthroughs will come and whether they’re thermal batteries, chemical batteries, solid state batteries. The contest is on because the prize is huge.

 

New Zealand will be a huge beneficiary of renewable energy and decarbonisation through electrification. We are blessed with some of the best wind with adequate solar. And with the ability to deploy that, at pace and scale if we choose to. 

 

I think the Boston Consulting Group’s estimate was $30 billion of investment is required. I see that as $30 billion of opportunity for domestic generation of energy for domestic use. And that will displace a fair proportion of the $4 billion a year we spend on imported liquid fossil fuels, and will displace the domestic use of fossil gas, which is an expensive and unhealthy alternative to electric heat pump technology for most residential users.

Worth considering a climate youth forum

You’re about to embark on another round of public consultation of your soon to be released advice to government. It seems to me that when you say the climate emergency is lacking in urgency, you’re pointing to a failure of democracy. I think I’m right in thinking you’ve floated the idea of citizens’ assemblies as a possibility in the past. Are they part of the solution?

 

It depends whether you’re looking at citizens’ assemblies as,  A: a way of a sharing knowledge and understanding, B: evaluating public policy choices that lie in front of us, or C: actually making decisions. 

 

There are different models for that. Our ultimate citizens’ assembly is parliament, where we have the chance to vote and elect leaders, who prior to being elected, put out campaign proposals for us to evaluate and after election are accountable in the electoral cycle for what kind of job they did, given the pledges and promises they made. 

 

So we do have a citizens’ assembly. We have well established processes about how you and I can influence the decisions our leaders make. That structure shouldn’t be discounted, particularly in New Zealand, where we have a unicameral system, a relatively small population, and some of the most accessible politicians in the Western world. 

 

So the next question is, okay, if if you wouldn’t necessarily have a decision-making citizens’ assembly because we’ve already got one for that, is there a role for more public fora in order to achieve the first two objectives of building understanding and evaluating public policy options to help inform our elected decision makers about the decisions they make? 

 

And in Ināia tonu nei, our advice on the first emissions reduction plan, we did say that we thought the government should explore those opportunities. 

 

They have created one. The Iwi Maori Platform for Climate Engagement. And that was along the lines recommended by the Commission. It’s maybe tthat we need a youth forum to give voice to a group that often feels it’s hard to access the levers of the decision makers.

 

And certainly, I think it is worth considering whether around the climate policy agenda, we have the right public participation opportunities to both develop understanding and, on the basis of that understanding, develop a contribution to the public policy advice to our elected decision makers. 

 

Because this is a multi decade transition. This is not a one policy choice. There are many, many choices that need to be made both around mitigation and adaptation. And I think we are going to be challenged to get an inclusive transition. By relying on our currently established modes of consultation, peak body advocacy, and electoral office engagement on the sort of ground roots across New Zealand. I think we may need other institutional arrangements to complement the current policy advisory groups.

What happens to your submission?

 

I, like many thousands of others, made a submission in your last round of consultations. And I suspect I’m not alone in wondering whether my well crafted words have been read by anybody or made any impact. Can you tell me a little bit about what happens to the submissions.

 

We got 15,000 submissions on our draft advice on the first round of of emissions reduction plan advice. 

 

Of those, I can’t remember the exact number but in the order of 10,000, were postcard style “me too” submissions. So it doesn’t take a lot of time to process the me too ones. 

 

You kind of count them up, and you say they’re of this nature, and they are for this or against this, or whatever. 

 

But there were about 5000 substantive submissions, and some of which were as simple as please see my book attached. But that some of which did follow our advice and provide particular feedback on some or all of the recommendations. 

 

And that does require triage. That requires somebody with the lens of the commission’s work, to pick up each of those submissions, read them, meta tag them as being either about this part of our advice that part or advice. That is then sent to one of the technical analysts at the commission who are experts in that domain. So if you’ve got a submission that’s about energy, transport, forestry, then it will be sent to three different analysts, the energy analyst, the forestry analyst, and the transport analysts, who will then review it and provide some kind of summary of what the nature of those submissions is saying about our draft advice. 

 

That comes back through the process to the board of the commission, who have been briefed. So the board of the commission don’t read all the submissions, obviously, that was not going to be feasible. The triage team consisted often of masters level students from Victoria University who had been studying in the environmental domain. 

 

They were the ones who were doing the first read and directing the traffic to the analysts within the staff and the commission. The staff of the commission were then feeding their briefings back to the board. 

 

The staff also provided recommendations for changes where appropriate to those draft recommendations. And then the board then finalised its recommendations, which were all agreed to without objection by all of the commissioners, before our report was finally delivered to the government.

Is New Zealand pulling its weight?

And finally, back to that second world war analogy: Is New Zealand’s pulling its weight when it comes to the climate emergency? Are our targets enough?

 

My view is we should focus less on making the targets more stringent and more on getting the work done to ensure we achieve them. I think there’s a real risk of disappointed expectations. If we don’t actually commit both public policy and private action to get gross emissions from all sources substantially down sooner.

…………………….

Rod Carr interview part one.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

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