By 2032, new homes won’t have gas connections, we’ll be cycling twice as much, and you won’t be able to import a petrol car, under a blueprint for making the whole country carbon neutral.

What we would get under the plan is lower household energy bills (for most people), better health, quieter streets, cleaner water and better biodiversity, because swathes of land will have been planted in government-subsidised native trees.

The Climate Change Commission has released its draft plan for slashing New Zealand’s emissions, warning we must move faster if we’re to do our share internationally and get carbon neutral by 2050.

“Aotearoa will not meet its targets without strong and decisive action now,” said its analysis.

The main plank of the independent commission’s recommendations is three emissions budgets. The cuts will start out reasonably gently, at an average of 5.6 per cent lower than 2018 over the next four years, before ramping up to almost 26 per cent lower in 2031-35.

The individual gases will follow different paths, with carbon dioxide starting with a 4.7 per cent drop (on average, per year) and falling to almost 37 per cent a year below today's levels between 2031-35.

Methane from livestock will start by dropping 6.5 per cent annually, and end up with an annual average about 16 per cent below 2018 levels during 2031-35.

Put another way, including some offsetting by forestry, we’ll need to restrict net planet-heating gases to the equivalent of 67.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year by 2025, 57.3m tonnes by 2030 and 44.6m tonnes by 2035. That compares to 69m tonnes of emissions in 2018.

“We can’t continue to postpone what we need to do to reach our goals,” said Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, at an announcement at which she committed to meet the budgets. Delaying would mean pushing the burden to future generations, she said. “The Government will not hold back”.

The commission made proposals for how to get there, “feasibly and affordably”.

Coal would be phased out quickly, with a longer transition for natural gas. There’d be fewer cows in the 2030s, but not necessarily less milk. Pine plantations would taper off, but native forests would keep expanding.

Rather than fixating on getting to 100 per cent renewable electricity, we’d focus on decarbonising all energy – including heat for manufacturing.

As for the cost, the commission put the price of being carbon neutral by 2050 at less than 1 per cent of projected GDP – a fraction of what was estimated when Parliament passed the Zero Carbon Act.

Its models estimate decarbonising will cost $760 million ($190m a year) over the next four years, $11.5 billion ($2.3b a year) over the following five years and $21.5b ($4.3b a year) from 2030-35.

That figure doesn’t include the additional benefits of decarbonising (such as lower health costs from lower air pollution) or the costs of failing to act (such as increased disaster payouts), said Climate Change Commission chair Rod Carr​.

Although the commission said the costs would be relatively small across the whole economy, the sting won’t be evenly felt.

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The analysis listed risks to Māori, low-income earners and others. Poorer households spend more of their income on goods that are likely to rise in price, such as petrol – and the commission called for targeted support to those who need it.

Coal mining and the oil and gas sectors could lose 600 to 1100 jobs by 2035. The commission said those people needed time to retrain and redeploy to new and growing industries, possibly hydrogen, biofuel, native forest planting and processing pine offcuts to use in boilers.

No estimates were available on the expected job growth in those areas, but Carr said that could change as the picture became more certain.

By 2030, the country’s farms will be managed more efficiently, producing current levels of milk and meat with fewer animals, less fertiliser and supplementary feed, in the commission’s roadmap. Stock numbers would fall about 15 per cent, which Ardern said would return them to 2005 levels.

The commission’s model of “an ambitious but achievable” path to 2050 uses only technologies readily available today – without relying on future scientific advances, such as a methane vaccine.

From 2025, an estimated 2000 hectares a year of dairy land would be converted to horticulture, in the proposed pathway.

Can we afford it?

The commission had to come up with a way to meet the budgets, without breaking the bank.

The draft advice opens for public submissions on Monday, and a final version will go to Cabinet in May. The Government has until December to decide whether to adopt the budgets.

Top of the proposed to-do list was phasing out ageing petrol cars, and boosting electric vehicle sales.

The commission also wants the price to emit carbon – under our Emissions Trading Scheme – to be updated right away, so it sits between $30 and $70, depending on demand. This is up from the current price bracket of between $20 and $50.

Turbo-charging incentives to plant many more permanent native trees was an urgent item proposed for Government action next year. But the commission doesn’t want rampant planting – it’s proposed capping how much land can be forested, and shifting the mix away from pine to indigenous trees.

Natural gas was granted a much more gradual transition than coal – with a ban on new coal boilers proposed almost immediately, and a steep phase-out of most existing ones.

Gas may be needed for longer, particularly to make electricity. But the commission proposed starting the process of designing gas out of homes and buildings within four years, by stopping new homes from connecting to the natural gas network.

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That’s because new homes have a long life, and, by the end of it, New Zealand needs to have virtually rid itself of fossil fuels.

The same logic was applied to Government spending on long-lived assets, which the commission said should start specifically factoring in the cost of removing any carbon emitted in construction.

Reacting to the budgets and advice, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern​ said the draft advice was an achievable blueprint, and she committed to “picking up the pace”.

Ardern pre-empted some of the commissions’ transport recommendations on Thursday, when she announced moves to raise the fuel efficiency of car imports by 2025, three years ahead of the commission’s schedule.

The Government also said it will ban councils from buying fossil-fueled buses from 2025, and, at some point, require vehicles to use biofuel blends. The biofuel promise foreshadowed the commission’s proposal for petrol, diesels and aviation to be 3 per cent biofuel by 2035.

Transport Minister Michael Wood​ also confirmed on Thursday he’ll announce unspecified financial incentives for low-emissions cars.

But the commission wants the Government to do more to shift its transport spending away from a long-standing heavy skew to roads.

The analysis proposes tying transport funding to meeting New Zealand’s emissions goals.

By 2030, the commission wants trips on foot to increase by a quarter, and cycling and public transport use to roughly double.

On electricity, it echoed its predecessor the Interim Climate Change Committee, which expressed reservations about the Government’s focus on getting to 100 per cent renewable electricity.

Rather than spending billions getting rid of the final few per cent of fossil fuels (mainly gas) from the grid, the new commission proposed the Government should spend that money decarbonising bigger problems.

The commission backed a national energy strategy aimed at shrinking total energy emissions, including the coal, diesel and gas used in manufacturing processes, which creates a lot of direct pollution.

By 2035, the commission wants 60 per cent of energy – manufacturing included – to come from renewable sources, compared with roughly 40 per cent today.

That would mean converting the equivalent of one to two large coal-powered dairy processing factories a year to low-carbon fuels, perhaps electricity or biomass (such as forestry waste).

Carr said we need to stop using coal to create low and medium heat, as there are readily available alternatives. “The fact it’s cheap and nasty doesn’t make it acceptable.”

New Zealand would still reach 95 per cent renewable electricity generation in the early 2030s, on the commission’s modelling.

By then, Huntly’s coal-fired power generators would be shut, and so would Tiwai Point aluminum smelter, according to the commission’s analysis, with the latter’s closure having freed up lots of green power.

Meanwhile, the total renewable electricity produced in New Zealand would be up by a fifth, to cover day-to-day demand, rising electric car ownership and replacing coal- and gas-fired processes with electricity.

What will the Government do?

Ardern has publicly backed the budgets. Climate Change Minister James Shaw told Stuff he’s committed to making the “eye-watering” cuts proposed.

“We set the Climate Change Commission up for a reason, to offer politically neutral, independent expert advice grounded in science and economics,” he said. “If we don’t follow that advice, the question arises: who’s going to come up with a better answer?”

The commission has asked Shaw and Labour to seek bipartisan support for its budgets, once finalised, to ensure they don’t change every election. Shaw was reasonably hopeful it would happen.

“There will be plenty of arguments about what policy options we pursue in order to get to those budgets. It comes down to engaging with opposition parties… listening to their concerns, making all reasonable effort to accommodate those concerns as long as it doesn’t violate that golden rule of maintaining consistency with 1.5 degrees Celsius [of warming].”

“If they were to say ‘We think it’s all too much and we shouldn’t do it’ then I’d say we’re going to have to part ways.”

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Ardern, too, stressed the need to “overcome the yoyo-ing” on climate policy. National’s Stuart Smith released a statement urging the Government to “test every policy”, while broadly supporting the commission.

Even with the proposed new measures, New Zealand’s efforts to cut carbon dioxide could fall behind the global standard. That’s because other nations burn more coal to create electricity than we do, and can achieve dramatic carbon cuts between now and 2030 by switching to wind and solar power.

The slower pace of change could leave the country open to criticism that we aren’t doing our fair share to keep global temperatures under 1.5C, which the John Key National government pledged to under the Paris Agreement.

Scientists have warned we must nearly halve our net carbon dioxide emissions by 2030. Under the commission’s plan, we’ll only cut our carbon emissions by 18.3 per cent by the end of the decade.

To play our fair share, the country can both make domestic greenhouse cuts and buy offshore carbon credits – essentially funding other nations’ decarbonisation, Carr said. “The climate and the planet don’t care whether emissions are reduced here or there.”

In a widely-expected move, it told the Government to toughen its pledge to the UN under the Paris Agreement, and to use overseas carbon-cutting projects to make up the shortfall from what New Zealand could do domestically and affordably.

Whether it’s struck the right balance will be debated in the coming weeks.

What if we say no?

If we don’t adopt the budgets, and carry on with current policies, we’d make it only halfway to meeting the Government’s 2050 methane target, according to the commission’s modelling.

Without further action, New Zealand’s long-lived gases, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide, would fall, but not by enough. Our net emissions (which includes carbon absorbed by trees) would land at a projected 6.3 million tonnes in 2050 – too high to hit the net zero target.

More importantly, the gains wouldn’t be sustainable, the commission concluded. Without major new policies, our progress would rely too heavily on planting new pine trees to earn carbon credits, and too little on cutting source pollution.

It would be a partial, short-term victory, the analysis concluded.

By 2050, there’d be little space left to plant more trees, and heavy industry wouldn’t have done enough work to cut pollution at the source, the commission’s modelling suggested.

This would leave “the next generation with the task of reducing gross emissions at the same time as they will need to be adapting to escalating climate change impacts,” the commission said.

It called for “transformational and lasting change” to cut the causes of heating.

“The transition must reduce emissions at pace while allowing the country to continue to grow,” it said.

What you need to know

Getting to zero carbon will change how we live and work. Here’s what’s proposed for different sectors in the next 15 years and beyond.

Housing

• New homes one-third more energy efficient by 2035

• No new natural gas connections to the network or bottled LPG connections after 2025

• Ageing gas heating and hot water systems switch to electric or biomass when they’re replaced

• By 2050, existing natural gas in buildings will be phased out

• Plan our cities denser

Heat pumps are already cheaper for heating homes than natural gas, and electric hot water is comparable, the commission said. Commercial buildings and houses need to up their insulation and get more energy-efficient – leaving more clean energy for transport and energy. Housing needs to get denser on transport routes to give people better access to trains, buses and cycling.

Transport

• Lower bus, train and ferry fares for under-25s and other groups

• No new or imported petrol and diesel vehicles, as early as 2030

• Feebate or subsidy for electric cars, which could be bought in bulk to boost supply

• More car-sharing and rental schemes for EVs

• More EV charging stations

• Electrify major railway lines

• More working-from-home

By 2027, half of all new cars and motorbikes will need to be electric, and we’ll need to cut off petrol and diesel imports shortly after that, the commission said. Petrol, diesel and aviation fuel will need to contain an increasing proportion of biofuel. We’ll need to walk, cycle and hop on public transport far more often, and drive less – and the Government should divvy up its transport spending accordingly, it said.

Manufacturing

• No new coal boilers, as soon as possible

• Phasing out existing coal use

• More biomass, such as wood, and (potentially) hydrogen to replace fossil fuels

For manufacturing processes needing temperatures under 300C, it’s relatively affordable to switch to electrical or wood-fired boilers, the commission said. Wood waste from a growing number of tree plantations could be put to use. Coal boilers need to be the first priority – the commission wants to save 1.4 million tonnes of emissions each year by 2028. It proposes the Government give businesses cash to make the switch.

For higher-temperature processes, such as concrete and steel, we’ll need to decide whether to wait for low-emissions tech to be invented, try to find low-carbon solutions in New Zealand, or switch to lower-carbon overseas imports. The commission sees no future for aluminium in Southland or methanol in Taranaki. However, production for all other goods can continue at current levels, the commission said.

Electricity

• No more coal-fired generation at Huntly, by the end of the decade

• More large-scale wind and solar built in the early 2020s, then a pause after Tiwai closes

• More household and community power generation

• Geothermal power stations releasing high levels of greenhouse gas close before 2030

The drawn-out exit of our largest power consumer, the Tiwai aluminium smelter, is causing uncertainty for rapid solar and wind expansion, it said. The sooner there’s an exit date, the better for planning a low-carbon future, suggested the commission. Even as demand grows, the grid will get greener: up to 95 per cent of electricity will be renewable in the 2030s. By 2035, we’ll need 20 per cent more electricity than we did in 2018, to power cars and factories.

Since electricity is just one form of energy, the commission recommends thinking of it together with energy used in manufacturing, and aiming to green the overall mix.

Trees

• 12,000 hectares of new native forest from 2021, rising to 16,000 hectares annually by 2025 and 25,000 a year by 2030

• Native planting would stay high until 2050

• Pine trees would continue to grow until 2030 but then taper off

• We’d need to stop cutting down existing native forests from 2025

• More timber for construction, to replace steel and concrete

Despite all the talk of planting, people felling native forest is still a sizable piece of New Zealand’s emissions. As well as stopping the chop, the draft advice tells the Government to create incentives to create new, permanent native forests, by 31 December 2022. It could be a One Billion Trees-style grant scheme, only focussed purely on indigenous trees, not pine and indgenous, as the current scheme is.

The commission also proposes giving incentives for pest control, to defend the carbon already stored in established forests from being ravaged by deer and goats. It acknowledged permanent native forestry creates fewer jobs than pine plantations, but said it could be done on steep or marginal land that was unsuitable for pine or farming and wasn’t currently employing anyone.

Farming

• Herds would shrink by 15 per cent, compared with 8 to 10 per cent without adopting the budgets

• By 2030, a small shift to horticulture away from dairy farming

• By 2035 milk solid production would increase slightly, and meat production would fall slightly, compared with business-as-usual

• NZ would start measuring and increasing carbon in soil, wetlands and small blocks of trees

Many farms would need to change their management style, using smaller herds, better breeding, precision fertiliser use and other tactics to keep milk and meat production the same while shrinking methane, the commission said.

By doing that, farming could meet its 2030 methane target and the lower end of its 2050 target without hoped-for fixes such as a methane vaccine or low-methane cow breeding, the commission said. Low methane sheep breeding is available, and factored in.

If new technology comes along, farmers could meet the high end of the 2050 methane target, or better. Under current Government policies, methane would reduce by only 12 per cent in 2050, well short of the Zero Carbon Act’s 24 to 47 per cent range.

Longer-term, things get tougher. While farming methane isn’t required to get to zero, the commissions suggested by 2100 it may need to fall between 49 and 60 per cent (below 2017 levels), to help keep the world inside 1.5C heating.

That would be tough without either cutting production, or technological breakthroughs.

Nitrous oxide from animal urine and fertiliser is difficult to cut, it said, but we’ll need to reduce it by at least 16 per cent by 2035.

Waste

• Catch more of the methane released from landfills

• More products to be recovered at the end of their lives by manufacturer-led schemes

• Redesign products to be reusable and recyclable, to lower manufacturing emissions

Most of the greenhouse gas from our dumps is produced when organic material, such as food, paper, and garden waste decomposes and creates methane. We’ll need to compost more of this and ensure the rest goes to landfills that capture and burn methane, the commission said.

Refrigerants

• Import restrictions on products containing greenhouse gas refrigerants

• Higher maintenance and disposal standards for refrigerants

Hydrofluorocarbons – found in fridges and air conditioners – replaced the ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons, but, unfortunately, they themselves are very powerful greenhouse gases. People are already phasing out bulk supplies of these gases, but the commission wants this extended to hydrofluorocarbons imported in finished products. It also wants better standards for businesses and technicians.

Emissions trading

• Shrinking supply of units available for auction, to align with the commission’s budgets

• Higher price to emit carbon, costing between $30 and $70 per tonne with increases each year

• Cash raised from selling units pays for carbon-cutting schemes

• Phase out free units offered to exporters and big polluters – but with a possible review if there’s evidence emissions are leaking to other countries

The Government already put a cap on the number of carbon credits available for countries to meet their obligations each year, and introduced auctioning. The commission wants to see more improvements.