Forests and sustainable biomass are New Zealand’s superpower to decarbonise a growing economy.

Scion’s submission on the Government’s second emissions reduction plan (ERP) emphasises that while New Zealand is on track to meet domestic emissions budgets for 2030, ERP2 needs to set a trajectory for greater ambition in subsequent budget periods.

We need to close a potential 17 Mt CO₂-e gap to meet the third emissions budget, and we think ERP2 should set a clear pathway to encourage use of forest and other biomass to help decarbonise other parts of the economy – this is going to take significant new investment in wood processing.

As well as having a clearer focus on gross emissions reduction, New Zealand needs to grow significantly more forest – indigenous as well as exotic – and will need to manage some of those forests differently, to help meet our net-zero targets.

Increasing the area of indigenous forest at scale and at pace will require significant investment in innovation to reduce the cost of forest establishment, and in innovation to accelerate the transition of continuous cover forest from canopy dominated by exotic species to indigenous forest.