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Our Research

Climate change mitigation

Motu is currently involved in several projects exploring how the emissions leading to climate change can be mitigated. Some of these projects focus on climate change issues in New Zealand, and some consider the effects of climate change overseas.

In 2013, Motu launched Shaping New Zealand’s Low-Emission Future: Making the NZ ETS Effective. Funded by the Aotearoa Foundation and other supporters, the programme has now run for six years and been instrumental in changes to the ETS and the introduction of the Zero Carbon Bill.

Our research focus

Motu’s current and recent research focus is on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions through:

Emissions pricing such as the New Zealand Emissions Trading System addressing agricultural 'biological' emissions from cows and sheep.
Sequestering carbon in trees in New Zealand.
Understanding the linkages between managing freshwater quality and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.
Working with people in developing countries to reduce their emissions.
The design of international cooperative agreements.

Funders

Aotearoa Foundation, Ministry for Primary Industries, NZ Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre, The Deep South: Te Kōmata o Te Tonga, NZ Climate Change Research Institute, Tindall Foundation, Mighty River Power, Ministry for the Environment, Meridian Energy, Z Energy, Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment

Publications

Waro Project

Waro: Helping the owners of Māori land get paid to plant trees to clean the air for generations to come.
Motu is working on the Waro Project with Hikurangi Enterprises to connect with Māori landowners. The…

Carbon policy design and distributional impacts: What does the research tell us?

Author: Lynn Riggs

Working Paper

There are two main veins of literature examining the distributional effects of carbon policy: the effects on households and the effects on production sectors (i.e., employment).

These literatures have generally arisen from two common arguments against…

Methodology for Modelling Distributional Impacts of Emissions Budgets on Employment in New Zealand

Authors: Lynn Riggs | Livvy Mitchell

Working Paper

Efforts to reduce emissions to counter climate change are expected to have both costs and benefits, and these effects are likely to be unevenly distributed across the population. Hence, we developed the Distributional Impacts Microsimulation…

Predicted Distributional Impacts of Climate Change Policy on Employment

Authors: Lynn Riggs | Livvy Mitchell

Working Paper

Efforts to reduce emissions to counter climate change are expected to have both costs and benefits. These effects are likely to be unevenly distributed across the population.

We examined the potential distributional impacts on employment…

Permanent forest investment in a climate of uncertainty

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Sandra Cortés-Acosta

Working Paper

Forestry investment involves long time horizons. Planting decisions must be made amidst a range of uncertainties.

Voluntary climate mitigation in Aotearoa New Zealand

Publication

This paper proposes an innovative two-track system aimed at scaling up voluntary climate action to help Aotearoa New Zealand meet its Paris Agreement targets – or mitigate beyond the targets.

Emissions trading

Trading systems use price to encourage polluters to reduce their environmental impact. Regulators fix the total amount of pollution to a level that will achieve an environmental target and introduce a price on pollution. Polluters…

Clear price signals for a transition to low emissions

Author: Suzi Kerr

Presentation

Does New Zealand business have the capacity to lead the transition to a net-zero-carbon economy? What are the opportunities? Where are the emerging technologies and tools for cutting emissions and adapting to climate change? What…

Anonymous Contract Trust

Authors: Suzi Kerr | Jason Funk

Other

This is a model reforestation contract or Kawenata created by Suzi Kerr, Jason Funk and Chapman Tripp.

The Tindall Foundation has contracted Motu to negotiate and execute a contract for carbon sequestration through native forest regeneration…

Anonymous Forestry Contract

Authors: Suzi Kerr | Jason Funk

Other

A Forest-Profit Expectations Dataset for New Zealand, 1990-2008

Authors: Alex Olssen | Wei Zhang | Suzi Kerr | David Evison

Working Paper

In this paper, we construct a dataset of annual expected forest profits in New Zealand from 1990-2008 at a fine spatial resolution. We do not include land values in any of our profit calculations.

We estimate…

Financial Contracts and the Management of Carbon Emissions in Small Scale Plantation Forests

Author: Andrew Coleman

Working Paper

Under the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme, foresters can obtain carbon units as their forests sequester carbon. If they sell these units as they are earned, the units must be repurchased when the forest is…

Energy, the Environment and Technological Change

Authors: Adam Jaffe | Richard Newell | David Popp

Article

Within the field of environmental economics, the role of technological change has received much attention. The long-term nature of many environmental problems, such as climate change, makes understanding the evolution of technology an important part…

Adverse Selection and Participation in International Environmental Agreements

Author: Suzi Kerr

Other

This paper looks at the question of how transfers of resources should be structured to induce countries to efficiently produce global environmental protection even when they have private information about their costs and benefits. Addressing…

Restoring forests through carbon farming on Māori land in New Zealand/Aotearoa

Authors: Suzi Kerr | Jason Funk

Article

Forests perform a range of valuable environmental functions, such as sequestering carbon, controlling erosion, and sheltering a diversity of species. Traditional cultures such as that of Maori in Aotearoa/New Zealand (NZ) have long seen forests…

Preliminary Evidence on Responses to the New Zealand Forestry Emissions Trading Scheme

Authors: Eric Karpas | Suzi Kerr

Working Paper

New Zealand is the first country to implement a Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) that includes a forestry component as part of its contribution to global climate mitigation and as a strategy for compliance…

China’s Energy Economy: Technical Change, Factor Demand and Interfactor/Interfuel Substitution

Authors: Les Oxley | Bongguen Kim | Hengyun Ma

Working Paper

With its rapid economic growth, China's primary energy consumption has exceeded domestic energy production since 1994, leading to a substantial expansion in energy imports, particularly of oil. China's energy demand has an increasingly significant impact…

Shaping New Zealand's low-emission future

Motu is undertaking a multi-disciplinary programme on New Zealand’s pathway to a global low-emission future. It is aimed at making the NZ emissions trading scheme (ETS) effective. The project has run continuously from 2013 and…

Climate Teams: International Greenhouse Gas Mitigation

Countries together
can transfer our resources
and reach net zero.

Researchers at Motu, Seoul National University, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia, Environmental Defense Fund, and the University of California, Santa Barbara are proposing a new mechanism to…

Tropical Deforestation

Motu’s work on tropical deforestation focuses on the design of international policy for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD). It builds on Suzi Kerr's earlier work on deforestation, carbon sequestation, carbon reference levels, and…