(YUI_TAB) (HEADER)Outline(/HEADER)
A Green New Deal for New Zealand: A Warm Home and a Cool Planet
A Green New Deal takes on three of New Zealand's biggest problems at once. It tackles the economic crisis, the environmental crisis and the climate crisis at the same time.
The original New Deal
America was in deep economic trouble in 1933: closed banks, high unemployment, falling commodity prices. President Roosevelt responded with the New Deal, a new social contract between the Government and the people. The programme was designed to give relief to the unemployed, reform business and financial practices, and promote economic recovery.
The New Deal is best remembered for its major spending by the Government. Capital works and infrastructure programmes provided work, stimulated economic activity and provide a socially fair basis for the future economy.
The New Deal also reformed banking and finance regulations, supported trade unions, provided for social welfare programmes, stimulated education and creative endeavours, and supported many industries. President Roosevelt's integrated programme of activity addressed a myriad of problems simultaneously.
New Zealand today
New Zealand in 2009 faces a similar situation.
Financial crisis
The developed world is in the grip of a financial crisis, brought on by the collapse of the speculative economy. Asset bubbles have burst and left debt levels hugely out of kilter with the real value of assets. The supply of credit has dried up as a result. The underlying assumptions of the banking and financial sectors have been proved wrong, and ordinary people are paying the price as sales and then jobs fall as a consequence.
New Zealand and the world also face crises in the way we interact with our natural environment and in the energy that we use.
Climate change
At the most urgent level, we face the imminent prospect of climate change. Unless we urgently reduce our net emission of greenhouse gases, we face unstoppable catastrophic effects.
New Scientist recently speculated on the likely effects of a 4 degree rise in global temperatures, expected this century on current trends. They suggested this will leave most of the earth's landmass uninhabitable. Most land will either become desert or suffer from extreme flooding and other weather events. Remaining land, including New Zealand, will be needed for intensive food production and human habitation.
Other critical problems
Critical problems also include:
- freshwater availability and pollution
- over-fishing, leading to fisheries depletion
- food supply shortages
End of cheap oil
The other massive challenge facing us in the foreseeable future is the end of cheap oil. Even the oil companies now concede that 'peak oil', at least for conventional oil, is imminent.
Our consumption of oil is much greater than the discovery of new supply. We use oil for virtually all transportation, plus many other uses from plastics to food production. Oil will rapidly become much more expensive, causing us to rethink many of the ways we currently live.
Related crises: environment and economy
In contrast to the 1930s, the environmental crisis directly contributes to the economic crisis. We are hitting the ecological limits of oil availability, climate, freshwater and the productivity of the oceans. Unless we address those issues the economic crisis will not go away.
Enter the Green New Deal
The Green Party says that New Zealand needs to approach these inter-linked crises in an integrated way, just as Roosevelt did in the US in the 1930s.
When we create infrastructure, we need to make sure that the future economy
- will be sustainable,
- minimises climate change, and
- doesn't count on a plentiful supply of cheap oil.
The jobs created and economic activity stimulated need to build in this direction.
The Green Party is working on a programme of legislative, environmental, economic and social actions that could respond to the multiple challenges that we face at the same time. It would also redefine the relationships between Government, people and environment.
We hope, together with interested New Zealanders, we can persuade the Government to adopt these measures, in the interests of all Kiwis, both now and in the future. We're also ready to work across Party lines to support a Green New Deal.
The Green New Deal stimulus package
The measures suggested in this stimulus package are a first bite at the Green New Deal apple.
They represent a range of measures totalling $3.3 billion over 3 years, along with a shift in the direction of committed transport funding. This is about 0.5% of GDP and small compared with the stimulus packages of other countries.
The measures are balanced between urban and rural areas, are "shovel-ready", and will move New Zealand towards the sustainable economy that future generations need. In contrast, the solutions proposed by National and Labour will, for the most part continue the kinds of economic activity that will simultaneously move the country away from sustainability and stoke the fires of the next great financial collapse.
The Green Party is not against all of the Government's stimulus actions. We've supported the small and medium sized enterprise relief measures, for example. We have also pointed out that there are other steps that Government could have taken. We've offered our enthusiastic support for the national cycle network, which has been longstanding Green Party policy. We also welcome the Government's funding of the home insulation programme.
There are many aspects of the Green New Deal that are not included in this limited stimulus package; this is just what we would do right now. While the Government's "rolling maul" of measures seems to have collapsed, the Green Party will continue to develop and announce policy to add to the Green New Deal.
Download the Green New Deal Stimulus Package [144KB, PDF]
Benefits
Our conservative calculations are that this package would save or create almost 18,000 jobs (FTE for 1 year) directly and almost 43,000 in all. These calculations exclude the 40% extra jobs from investing in transport efficiency instead of motorways.
Other benefits are indicated here, but we have not included the very substantial saving on unemployment benefit - almost half a billion dollars in relation to 42,602 jobs.
Summary
This package of measures would first and foremost provide new jobs (or help retain existing ones) and stimulate the economy in a helpful way. It will also meaningfully address some of the pressing environmental problems that we face, including climate change, and reduce social inequalities. the package exemplifies classic 'green thinking' in that it provides win-win solutions.
This package includes measures in:
- Energy efficiency
- Transport efficiency
- Waterways protection
- State housing
- Community sector initiatives
Where possible we have costed measures and indicated their likely benefits for jobs and the economy, as well as their contribution to the environment and social goals. In other areas this degree of analysis is not yet possible, but we have indicated directions for future analysis and investigation.
Except where otherwise stated, the projects set out in this Green Stimulus Package are ready to implement immediately.
Limitations of the stimulus package
When preparing its budget and costing policy, the Government has access to a range of economic planning tools to which the Green Party does not.
We have used all means at our disposal to estimate the cost of the measures that we propose, and the number of jobs that we expect them to create. These are approximations, as are any estimates of flow-on effects for the economy from these projects.
We hope that if Government agrees to take up any of these measures, the Green Party will gain access to officials and other economic analysis resources to enable us to more accurately assess the costs and benefits of these ideas.
The data used in this package is drawn or derived from various sources, and work is continuing to ensure its integrity.
(HEADER)Water(/HEADER)
Clean Water
Our lowland rivers and streams are seriously polluted by livestock effluent and farm runoff. This is not just an environmental loss; it is a threat to our food and tourism markets and our "clean green" brand.
This project will provide jobs for rural unemployed people and support rural businesses such as fencing supplies and plant nurseries. Regional councils would help landowners develop riparian plans and then Task Force Green or Work and Income would provide wages for a work force to implement the plans by fencing and planting waterways. Farmers could contribute some materials or labour; rural businesses such as stock and station agents could provide some sponsorship e.g. of fencing materials. We estimate that New Zealand's streams and rivers could be protected in just nine years at this rate of investment.
Many young people would learn new skills. Farmers would gain from reduced flooding in some areas and more attractive farms everywhere. Biodiversity would thrive with new habitat for birds and native fish.
Environmental impacts will include:
- Stops pollution caused by animals entering rivers
- Helps stabilise stream banks effected by slumping and erosion
- Provides shade and food to encourage aquatic life
- Provides a barrier to catch pollutants that may enter streams
- Provides organic matter for pollutants to bind with - allowing the contaminants to be assimilated and "taken out" of the stream
- Reduces damage caused by flooding
- Enhances the visual appeal of the property
Social benefits include:
- Jobs and job training
- Investment in NZ industry (plant nurseries, fencing)
- Investment in rural communities
The '100% Pure' and 'clean green' brands are incredibly important to New Zealand's two most important industries: tourism and agriculture, meaning that the quality of freshwater is not only important to our quality of life, but has considerable economic importance also.
Our proposal: Regional Council grants
Providing funding to cover/subsidise materials and labour through grants administered by Regional Councils
How much will it cost?
$28 million per year starting immediately
Will it produce any savings (increased efficiency, redirected spending etc)?
No short term savings. Long term benefits of less money needed to clean up our waterways (hard to quantify as this will take generations to happen), less compliance and enforcement cost for regional councils, less litigation cost in the environment court, protecting our billion dollar "clean, green" tourism brand.
How many jobs could we expect this to create?
112 FTE direct jobs, multiplying to 225 FTE total (4 FTE/$m; multiplier of 2)
What flow-on economic impacts will this have?
- Investment in NZ industry (plant nurseries, fencing, labour)
- Investment in rural communities (labour, farms)
- Protecting our "clean, green" brand.
Our proposal: Taskforce Green
Or,Work And Income to cover/subsidise wages - farmers pay the cost of materials.
How much will it cost?
$172 million per year, it will take an estimated 9 years to complete the project
Will it produce any savings (increased efficiency, redirected spending etc)?
No short term savings. Long term benefits of less money needed to clean up our waterways (hard to quantify as this will take generations to happen), less compliance and enforcement cost for regional councils, less litigation cost in the environment court, protecting our billion dollar "clean, green" tourism brand.
How many jobs could we expect this to create?
2064 FTE direct jobs, multiplying to 4275 FTE total (12 FTE/$m; multiplier of 2.07)
What flow-on economic impacts will this have?
- Investment in NZ industry (plant nurseries, fencing)
- Investment in rural communities (labour, farms)
- Protecting our "clean, green" brand.
(HEADER)Community(/HEADER)
Community Economic Development
Some years ago the Labour Government abolished the last remaining Government unit dedicated to supporting Community Economic Development, or CEG.
We don't want to exactly replicate CEG, but there is an urgent need for a dedicated community economic development unit. This unit should involve communities directly in its development and ongoing functioning.
The unit would also need funds to help organisations in the community carrying out environmentally and socially useful work. It would create jobs among people and communities most heavily impacted by unemployment.
Building local economic resilience
A Community Economic Development Unit ($5m per annum) would have these functions:
- Supporting community economic development initiatives at local, regional and national level
- Helping Government departments, Local Government and private business to better understand and work with the community sector to successfully create jobs and to meet real social and environmental needs
- Provide some loan and direct funding support to community-based economic initiatives, and assistance with brokering same
- Support for research, development and training according to the needs of the community economic sector
- Support for community owned and directed banking initiatives such as the Bendigo Bank project currently being considered by Kiwibank, in association with some local authorities
Examples of this include:
- recycling and waste reduction
- free or low cost health, welfare, educational and community development services to marginalised individuals and communities
- community transport
- river and coastal restoration
- weed control
- replanting
- community and ethical banking
- community gardens
- housing support
Jobs in the community sector tend to be created and maintained at a lower cost than jobs in the public or private sectors. This is due to the values-driven nature of not-for-profits, and the contribution of volunteers.
Our proposal: Establish CEDU Grant And Loan Fund
How much will it cost?
$35m pa for 3 years
Will it produce any savings (increased efficiency, redirected spending etc)?
Not directly
How many jobs could we expect this to create?
Hard to quantify as this type of work is not well captured by existing models. Likely to be direct employment of at least 15 FTE per $1m invested (350 jobs direct) and a type II multiplier of at least 2, so at least 700 jobs overall.
What flow-on economic impacts will this have?
Resilient communities are more likely to maintain critical mass through the downturn, and to maintain flow on spending.
(HEADER)Energy(/HEADER)
Energy
We can greatly increase our energy efficiency simply by building on successful programmes we have now.
Every unit of energy we save through greater efficiency reduces greenhouse emissions and improves energy security, by limiting demand for oil or the need for new power stations.
See the Green New Deal Economic Stimulus Package [144KB, PDF] for more on these proposals:
- Home insulation
- Energy efficiency upgrades of 230 schools (coal boilers converted to wood waste)
- Increased grants to business through the EECA programmes to install efficiency measures with a
positive net benefit - Crown loans to public sector for energy efficiency upgrades (local government, hospitals, defence etc)
Home insulation
The Government has cancelled the Green Homes Fund for $1billion that we negotiated with the previous government, but we have been working together on a replacement scheme.
We suggest current funding should be ramped up from $50m in the first year to $100m in the third as we build capacity. This additional $164m over three years would create 1195 direct one-year new jobs over that time. When the sector multiplier is applied that becomes 1400 jobs across the whole economy.
Along with jobs and energy savings we get better health in warm, dry homes, and children with asthma spending less time in hospital are better educated.
School coal boilers
Last term EECA replaced old coal boilers in 31 schools with modern boilers burning wood waste. At the same time they checked the energy efficiency of the schools and improved it. School operating costs went down, leaving more to spend on education, local air quality improved without the coal particulates. It provided an educational opportunity for the children.
There are 600 more schools needing this service, and we could do 50 in the first year, followed by 90 a year after that. There are significant improvements to air quality (with consequent health benefits) and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
Increased grants to business
These projects will all pay for themselves within the lifetime of the investment, but tend not to happen because of how funding is split. Funding for capital improvements has to come from schools themselves, but the energy bill is paid by a Government operating grant.
The inability to transfer money between capital and operational budgets is a major obstacle to sensible energy efficiency.
Energy Intensive Business programme
The current Energy Intensive Business programme provides grants to businesses for energy improvements that will pay for themselves over their lifetime, but don't meet the firm's threshold for capital investment. The Australian government has just announced $200m for this kind of grant - New Zealand spends a meagre $2.3m.
We propose expanding the Energy Intensive Business programme with an additional $30m over three years, creating a further 156 direct jobs, multiplying to 350 total jobs.
Crown loans
The current Crown loan scheme provides capital for local government at no interest for investment in energy efficiency. There is scope to greatly expand this. We could convert all street lighting as it needs replacement to high efficiency lighting. This pays back its capital cost well within the lifetime of the investment; after that, rates bills are lower.
There are hospitals and prisons whose energy efficiency could also be improved with Crown loans, employing workers at the same time.
There are not enough people trained in energy efficiency. This ranges from the trades level (builders, plumbers, electricians who daily make decisions that affect energy use) through industrial plant managers and auditors. A recession is a good time to increase skills training opportunities as an alternative to a paid job, and to ensure we have the capacity to step up when the recession ends.
We envisage investing $20m over three years in supporting access to Polytech courses ranging in length and level, with the shorter simpler ones able to start in July 2010. This will create negligible jobs initially, but improve skills and productivity in the medium term.
Overall the energy efficiency projects will invest just under $300m over three years, and create 1781 extra jobs, which become 2714 with flow on effects, over the next three years.
(HEADER)Housing(/HEADER)
Housing
We propose a comprehensive housing construction programme to provide jobs in the building and related trades.
These jobs are desperately needed as building activity has declined dramatically.
There is also a growing need for housing. The current waiting list for HNZC is around 10,000 applicants, and rising. Our proposal will reduce the waiting list while providing housing that exceeds WHO standards for health and welfare. This means happier households and lower health costs for the taxpayer.
Having modern, energy-efficient state housing stock reduces demand for water and energy, protecting the environment and delaying the need to build more power capacity.
Our proposal: State house construction
How much will it cost?
$500m in the first year and $750m in years two and three for a total of 6,000+ new state houses in three years
Will it produce any savings (increased efficiency, redirected spending etc)?
State Housing built to the NOW Home specifications will mean increased savings either for the low income tenants or WINZ if they are paying the bills. This money can be redirected into family finances or back into WINZ coffers.
How many jobs could we expect this to create?
10,400 FTE direct jobs, multiplying to 28,600 FTE jobs total. (5.2 FTE/$m; multiplier of 2.76)
What flow-on economic impacts will this have?
Major productivity benefits for significant workforces, both in construction/trades, and from those who will live in more energy efficient housing
How quickly could it start?
Immediately, as half the residential construction capacity is idle. New residential consents have fallen by half since June 2007, meaning approximately 6,000 new homes per year are not getting built, devastating the construction sector.
Community Sector initiatives
Why the community sector?
Community and Iwi based enterprises work for social, environmental and economic good and are a significant source of jobs in a time of recession, particularly for vulnerable individuals and communities. Supporting development in this sector has a multiplier effect, fulfilling needs often not met in other parts of the economy.
Community Sector Housing
The community sector, including iwi based housing, has untapped potential to help provide housing to those in need, and to create jobs, including in particularly vulnerable areas and populations. However, because the sector is relatively new in New Zealand there is a need to provide capital for infrastructure support as well as for housing build. Specific areas for investment include:
- Assistance with funding the infrastructure of the community housing sector, aimed at supporting national and local organisations to build capacity,
- Investment of capital to enable the sector to build, say, a minimum of 500 houses a year for each of the next 3 years,
- Specific additional support for demonstration projects in the community housing sector (e.g. for 2 groups building low cost, high quality, environmentally sustainable social housing).
(HEADER)Transport(/HEADER)
Transport
The government recently took $420m from public transport, walking and cycling and allocated it to more new motorways. At the same time they added another half billion of "economic stimulus" money - altogether a billion more for new motorways.
Motorways are the least jobs intensive of transport projects, and make us more dependent on oil with higher greenhouse emissions. A raft of other transport projects will employ far more people and make our cities more liveable, improve our transport choices, reduce our carbon emissions and make us less oil-dependent.
We propose to shift this low quality spending into a range of transport projects, including:
- rebuilding and upgrading rail stations and bus exchanges, so they are people-friendly places, safe, warm, and with other attractions like shops for people while they wait
- increasing the frequency of services and numbers of public transport vehicles to cater for more passengers
- integrated ticketing and timetables to make public transport easy and convenient to use
- increasing and improving cycle lanes and walking paths, especially so the many children who want to cycle to school can do so safely
- and other small safety improvements.
Benefits
While new rail tracks are high capital with low intensity jobs, as new roads are, we could build the jobs-intensive parts of the Auckland rail tunnel first - the underground stations, which would provide very high employment.
A more diverse transportation system is more flexible and able to respond to local disruptions along with outside shocks.
Over the longer term, investment in public transport improvements will lead to lower per capita transportation expenditures, lower fuel expenditures (NZ rank fourth highest in the OECD), lower per capita road accident costs.
Reducing car dependence also leads to improved health and wellbeing and more efficient land-use patterns which have significant secondary benefits over time.
Example: Wellington
Without a network of public transport facilities, downtown Wellington would look very different.
Approximately 36% of Wellington's residents commute to work by public transportation. If each person used a car instead,
- space constraints would increase the cost of driving due to congestion and constrained parking
- offices would reduce the total number of workers in the downtown area
- clientele for shops and restaurants would be reduced, forcing them to spread out to bring in enough customers
Well designed public transport systems allow for more compact development and greater economic benefits. A well established relationship exists between increasing density and productivity of a workforce.
The environmental benefits are as follows:
- Better air and water quality
- Less noise pollution
- Lower CO2 emissions
- More liveable, walkable, and safer communities
Carbon emissions
Looking specifically at CO2 emissions, a person taking a train to work (60 km/day) instead of driving can personally save emitting 2500 kg of CO2 each year. This compares to CO2 savings of 10 kg/year for replacing incandescent lights with energy-saving ones or 350 kg/year by eating meat only twice a week rather than four times a week.
- Accident-related costs: Greater public transport use reduces roadway-related costs-traffic enforcement, emergency services
- Healthcare: The availability of public transportation can reduce costly duplication in transportation services.
- Enhancing mobility: Public transport provides the services for students, the elderly, people with disabilities which limit their mobility
Other priorities for future transport efficiency work in line with this package include:
- create a pool of money in the Land Transport Fund for public transport projects which is 100% funded - ie no local input needed. This would be contestable so only the best projects are funded this way.
- creation of new public transport services in provincial cities after a public discussion process to identify needs
- safe walking and cycling tracks throughout the country led by local government but again funded nationally, on a contestable basis.
Our proposal: Transport efficiency
How much will it cost?
All GND transport proposals are fiscally neutral. In 2009/10, 20% of the NLTF would be spent on alternatives to roads. This amounts to $564 million of which, $312 million is already committed by the Fund. This would leave $252 million of new spending for the year. This amount of new money rapidly grows to peak at 67% of the NLTF by 2013/14 or $1.8 billion.
Will it produce any savings (increased efficiency, redirected spending tc)?
There is a direct relationship between public transportation use and petroleum conservation. For every passenger kilometre travelled, public transportation is, at least twice as fuel efficient as private automobiles.
How many jobs could we expect this to create?
Public transport, active transport and other alternatives to roading is at least 40% more "jobs intense" than building motorways. The Victoria Transport Policy Institute give a direct figure of 31.3 FTE employees for every $1 million invested in public transport. [Source: Litman]
What flow-on economic impacts will this have?
When consumers are saving money on transport , they typically spend it in other more productive areas. Litman estimates that for every $1 million saved on fuel expenditure, an additional 4.5 indirect jobs are created through the purchasing of additional goods and services. Another 3.6 jobs are indirectly created with every $1 million saved of general motor vehicle expenditure.
Longer term, the land use changes enabled by greater urban densities clustered around public transport corridors will realise greater agglomeration benefits and energy efficiency benefits.
How quickly could it start?
Rapidly. Public transport infrastructure projects typically have a 1-5 year delay.
(HEADER)Waste(/HEADER)
Zero Waste Future
Community waste sector
The community waste sector is comprised of a network of community groups involved in waste reduction, recycling, reuse, composting and waste education services across the country. They often operating in rural and regional areas where commercial recycling operations are limited, and in areas with substantial Maori populations.
The community sector creates meaningful jobs in regional areas by recovering the valuable resources currently flowing into our landfills.
Working together towards a zero waste future enables communities to protect their local environment and enhance their social economy at the same time. Environmental benefits include less waste going to landfill, lower methane emissions and reduced toxic leachate. Turning recycled materials into new products saves energy and water.
The community resource recovery sector is committed to a zero waste future, and is not driven solely by profits. The private refuse and recycling sector will invest in recycling and reprocessing when the price is right but may abandon those schemes if and when market conditions change.
Jobs and economic benefits
Community recyclers also tend to favour systems that create more jobs over capital intensive low labour alternatives, and they have the added benefit of delivering services and creating jobs in regions that are not considered financially viable by commercial operators.
Recycling and reusing material that is currently shipped overseas for reprocessing, results in a reduction in low value exports, but with potential to create a higher value end product.
Considerable international and local evidence tells us that recycling contributes to employment. Envision NZ has estimates that at the very least, for every job in land-filling, 10 jobs could be created by collecting, sorting and recycling that material, and potentially up to 20. Currently 500 staff are employed in the community sector, with an annual turnover of $30 million. Many of the jobs created are entry level, or suitable for workers from a manufacturing or trades background. There is also a range of jobs in the higher skill bracket, including education and managerial roles.
Keeping the money in the local economy
A recent study by the Community Recycling Network has shown that different recycling models generate very different impacts for the local economy. They compared the following models:
- Community recycling organisation collecting kerbside crates, and sorting at a local recycling centre
- Nationally-owned recycling company collecting co-mingled kerbside wheelie bins, sorted at a local materials recovery facility
- Multinational recycling company collecting co-mingled kerbside wheelie bins and sending material to a regional materials recovery facility 100km away
The community recycler model saw 80c out of each dollar earned being spent in the local economy. A New Zealand private recycler came in at 22c in each dollar, and a multinational recycler at 15c in each dollar.
Our proposal
Read more about our three proposals for zero waste in the Green New Deal Stimulus Package [144KB, PDF]:
- Support for existing community recyclers to collect and recycle new waste streams they see as a priority in their area (agricultural waste, industrial plastics, e-waste, food and green waste, construction and demolition waste etc.)
- Establishing community recycling enterprises in new areas
- Accelerating waste education services: up-skilling a network of educators to deliver school programmes
by expanding zerowaste education for schools and introducing Te Reo Programme to deliver in Kura Kaupapa
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