About 300 people packed Otago Museum's Hutton Theatre to hear party founder Gareth Morgan and the party's chief of staff Geoff Simmons talk about its ''bold'' policies. The party took the chance to announce it would ban subsidies on fossil fuels, increase the price of carbon and overhaul energy efficiency efforts under its climate change policy. ''Climate change isn't going away, and New Zealand needs to have net zero carbon emissions by 2050,'' Mr Simmons said. ''TOP's plan is to have a proper price on carbon, one that reflects the challenge of meeting our 2030 and 2050 targets.'' The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) would be overhauled by setting a carbon budget, removing the current upper limit on the carbon price and keeping the scheme closed to international credits.

Source: Otago Daily Times March 09, 2017 17:03 UTC