People may no longer be able to afford to trade in their old car for an electric vehicle (EV). Photo: 123RF
The government looks set to raid the fund it set up to pay for the climate emergency to bankroll its "reprioritisation".
Yesterday it announced it was biffing a raft of programmes to free up money and resources for cost of living measures, and to pay for the rebuild after recent extreme weather events.
Policies on the chopping block include a number of climate measures, with the lion's share of the money "saved" - half a billion dollars - coming from dropping a plan to give lower and middle income families cash to buy electric vehicles when they ditched their old dunger.
That policy was paid for from the Climate Emergency Response Fund that, according to Treasury, is only to be used for climate spending.
The money comes from revenue collected by the Emissions Trading Scheme.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins was asked a number of times yesterday whether the money was allowed to be repurposed in this way.
He replied details about funding would be released in this year's Budget.
RNZ then followed up repeatedly with Hipkins' spokesperson asking for clarification as to whether the government intended to spend money allocated for climate on other priorities.
"Precisely how it will be reallocated is a matter for the Budget," they said.
Hipkins said the canned policies were not cost effective, and that other schemes to increase the uptake of EVs had proved more successful than had been estimated.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says details of the funding repriorisation will be in this year's Budget. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
He said the government's reduction targets had not changed, and it would make up the difference elsewhere.
A tenth of the country's total greenhouse gas emissions come from private transport.
Climate Change Commission figures show transport emissions must be cut by 13 percent by 2030, and 41 percent by 2035 to achieve emissions goals, which equates to cutting fossil fuel vehicle distance travelled by 20 percent within 13 years.
Electric vehicles need to make up 30 percent of the fleet by 2035.
The government has a number of times recently reprioritised money away from climate spending.
It hit the brakes on making emissions reductions its top transport priority, saying Cyclone Gabrielle has changed everything.
It had intended to reallocate some of the money normally spent on road maintenance towards bus and bike lanes.
The government has also repeatedly rolled over a fossil fuel subsidy at hundreds of millions of dollars a pop to bring down costs for motorists.
The government has declared a climate emergency.
Cimate change makes storms more frequent, and more damaging.