Energy Realities

By Robert McLachlan

[This is the transcript of my talk at the “Reality of Everything” conference held on 26 June, 2026. See the other talks at https://realityofeverything.org/]

I’d like to start with a couple of quotes.

“The Prime Minister has had to cut short his crucial Middle East talks seeking continuation of our oil supplies… The introduction of fuel rationing has given the union cause a large measure of public sympathy…”  – these were the words of the TV newsreader in the opening scene of the 1977 film Sleeping Dogs – nearly 50 years ago.

Secondly, a headline from the New York Times in 1988: “Sharp cut in burning of fossil fuels urged to battle shift in climate”.

Thirdly, from a New Zealand Government report called “Responding to Climate Change” released in 1990: “The Government could set fuel economy targets [along with] policy aimed at reducing the use of private vehicles and distances travelled”.

Concerns about energy and its availability, cost, and impacts, are nothing new. Now the world is plunged into yet another oil war and here at the bottom of the world we find ourselves in some respects no better prepared than in 1977. How could that be? Have we learned nothing?

Globally, ever-increasing energy use is a major driver of the polycrisis. Humanity is using energy at seven times the rate we were in 1950, the start of what is called the “Great Acceleration” in human affairs. That energy gives humanity the power to vastly expand our activities, including some that are very damaging to nature and to ourselves. Pick any environmental issue you like: climate change, plastic pollution, biodiversity loss, the impacts of fertilizer on freshwater – they are all driven by the scale of the operation, and that is driven by energy.

The burning of fossil fuels is responsible for the lion’s share of climate change, both globally and in New Zealand. Their use has to be stopped completely over the next few decades. An epic, inspiring task on a scale without precedent in history. We now have an outline of how that could be done, but I want to remind everybody that, so far, the use of not a single fossil fuel has peaked, not even coal.

Undoubtedly the share of renewables is growing. Solar and wind power have increased from 1.5 to 7.5% of global final energy consumption in the past decade. In particular, the current solar boom is really something. Even counting the impacts from mining and manufacturing, solar power has 1/100th the emissions of coal. The solar revolution has a long way to run.

However, this “transition” to solar and other renewables is additive rather than substitutive. In other words, while the contributions of renewable energy are growing, so is the consumption of fossil fuels, as seen in this graph. In fact, our consumption of fossil fuels has never been higher than it is today.

Turning to New Zealand, our energy landscape is quite distinctive. While we have a largely renewable electricity system, most of our overall energy – about 70% – still comes from fossil fuels. And it’s been that way for many years. About 70% of that fossil fuel is oil, and nearly all the oil is used for transport.

As we all know by now, climate change is not the only issue associated with oil. The supply is finite. As the easy-to-access fields become exhausted, it is becoming increasingly expensive and dirty to extract. It’s unevenly distributed, resulting in more or less continuous oil wars and political manipulation. Burning it creates air pollution that kills thousands of New Zealanders every year. Our transport system is expensive and highly inequitable – some people pop over to Bali or London every year; others can’t afford to make essential trips such as to medical appointments. So one area in which we can make a big difference is transport.

The solutions are well known in the transport sector.

For personal travel, it’s summed up in the slogan of the climate activist group Climate Liberation Aotearoa: travel less, travel active (that is, walk and cycle), travel public, and travel electric. Cities and countries that are following this track are seeing the rewards.

However, we’re currently locked into a system of infrastructure and of social norms that is making the shift harder than was anticipated in 1990. For example, I’m not seeing huge public protests over new motorway proposals. A social norm has been established for recycling – but not for having holidays nearby, instead of overseas. Instead, it’s become harder and harder to safely bike to work or school; lifestyles have become car dependent; and entire school sports teams fly to a championship in the northern hemisphere without a thought. With a locked-in system, it’s hard to anticipate where change might begin. There are possible ‘change agents’ all over: in government, in local communities, in small businesses, in the tourism and car industries. Change can be seeded in all of these and grow.

The Zero Carbon Act of 2019 is a good example. Up to the point when the idea of this was seeded, climate action had been going nowhere for decades. A tiny youth climate group, Generation Zero, was formed and ran a campaign around the idea. It was picked up by the Labour and Green parties. As soon as the Act was passed, the renewable energy industry sparked back into life and over the next few years, emissions plummeted. Fossil fuel burning has declined to levels not seen in nearly thirty years. This wasn’t just because of the specific workings of the Act; positive leadership and messaging from the top spread to all levels of society.

The Zero Carbon Act, although working within conventional economic and policy frameworks, was a huge breakthrough. It has the potential to enormously increase New Zealand’s energy sustainability and independence. It’s not perfect – it’s not ambitious enough and it extended our reliance on plantation forestry, which is a delaying tactic – but it can be improved over time. Unfortunately, after just a few years it’s now on life support. Pushback from government and industry has weakened its institutions and stretched its system of checks and balances to breaking point. We will need to fight to preserve the gains we have made and to press for more.

So I’ve claimed that for most of the things we use fossil fuel energy for, there are vastly better alternatives available. Most things, yes, but not all. What about the ‘difficult’ areas? I work on aviation emissions, a sector which experts love to say is ‘hard to abate’. What they mean is, there’s no existing energy source other than oil that can power an aircraft. Instead, they like to talk about possible future energy carriers, like biofuel, electric batteries or hydrogen. The trouble is that these do not exist at any scale, and the problems and uncertainties are huge. Nor does anyone want to pay for them or acknowledge their implications – I don’t think anyone wants to turn the whole of the Canterbury Plains over to grow canola for the jet set. These ‘techno-optimist’ solutions are a fraudulent delaying tactic.

Instead of ‘hard to abate’, I would say aviation is ‘hard to manage’. It’s actually very easy not to get on a plane. The problem is to persuade enough people to support change and end aviation’s free ride. The aviation sector is only growing (both in New Zealand and worldwide) because it escapes environmental regulation.

What’s happened is that as people get richer, they seem to have an unlimited demand for travel, a demand fostered by the travel industry, by government, by their friends, and more recently, by ‘influencers’. Long-distance air travel is by far the most energy-intensive thing anyone apart from astronauts will ever do. Current global air travel is about 1000 km per person per year, and even that is not sustainable. So just one trip to Europe will blow your share of that for 40 years.

From the ‘Living Well Within Limits’ project led by Professor Julia Steinberger at the University of Geneva, we know it’s possible to have a comfortable modern lifestyle with drastically lower energy use than is currently typical in western countries. That includes building and operating warm, dry homes; cities well serviced by public transport; provision of healthcare, healthy food and water supplies. And the energy would be provided by renewable electricity with dramatically lower environmental and health impacts than fossil fuels, making it less vulnerable to resource wars. A decline in energy use is nothing to be afraid of if it means less wastage and less environmental damage, along with better health and wellbeing.

Energy is nothing if not topical. You can read a different opinion about our electricity system or fuel supply every day of the year. And then turn the page and read about airlines adding new long-haul routes. But you will read little about how this entire system is both highly damaging now and completely unsustainable into the future. Nor will you read about alternative futures that are possible with existing technologies. My plea to people in power is to keep reminding everyone of the basic point that fossil fuels must be phased out urgently. Talk about the new things like solar farms, yes, but also talk about how to get rid of the old things that burn coal, gas, and oil, and about how to rein in sectors like aviation that get off scot-free.

Humans have been getting energy by burning things for a long, long time – hundreds of thousands of years. Now for the first time we have a chance to turn away from fire. We should seize that chance.

Politicians need to lead on climate

By Rod Carr

Image: Climate Change Commission

I am an optimist. Hope is not a strategy, neither are hopes always the same as expectations. In my world, to hope for something is to have an optimistic bias in a reasonable expectation of something happening in the future.

In the run up to the election this year, my climate hopes are simple. I hope our candidates:

Use evidence and expert, unbiased advice to inform their policies so public trust in climate policy builds over time.

Acknowledge that more frequent and more extreme weather events are here now and will increase in frequency and severity in coming years to ensure voters understand climate policy is essential to their lives and livelihoods.

Accept that the combustion of fossil fuels in the open air has made, and continues to make, a significant contribution to extreme weather events in order to confront misinformation that the weather has always changed, and there is nothing to see, and even if the weather is changing, we are not causing the change – and even if we are, there is nothing we can do about it. Leadership is required to confront denial and fatalism.

Acknowledge that every tonne of emissions makes the same contribution to extreme weather wherever it comes from, and every tonne avoided contributes the same to better outcomes locally and globally to confront the argument that “because our emissions are small compared to the global total, we don’t need to do anything and anything we do won’t make a difference.”

Acknowledge the evidence that ‘leakage’, the assertion that if we reduce emissions there will be an equal or greater level of emissions elsewhere, is unproven and often asserted by stakeholders profiting from maintaining or increasing their emissions.

Acknowledge that New Zealand made its Paris commitments with full information, at its own discretion, and in its own self-interest, believing it would be cheaper for us to pay other countries to reduce their emissions more than to face the impact on our own economy from larger local reductions and New Zealand will therefore abide by its commitments under the Paris Agreement.

Accept that pricing emissions can reward investment in low emissions technologies and practices in every sector, but price alone cannot fairly distribute burdens of change or reflect the risk of delaying action or the impact of emissions on public health and on the environment and as a consequence relying on market prices alone is an unfair and ineffective climate policy.

Lead our communities to understand that, while adaptation to the changing climate is already underway, adaptation alone is an inadequate local approach to ensure New Zealand produces the low emissions products and services of the future and have lifestyles that are affordable in a climate impacted world.

Call out stakeholders who benefit from delaying the transition to low emissions energy production and transport systems and decline to accept campaign funds and policy advice from these conflicted vested interests.

Promote climate policies that put national interest and the public interest ahead of the vested interests which benefit from delaying greenhouse gas emissions reductions by as much as possible, as soon as possible, from all sources.

Commit to a national energy strategy that promotes decarbonisation through electrification of households and businesses through the accelerated uptake of existing low emissions technologies by eliminating subsidies for fossil fuel exploration, importation, distribution and use, and reducing regulatory and financial barriers to the uptake of low emissions, and waste reducing, technologies and practices.

Commit to investigating how the tax system can be used to accelerate the movement toward a low emissions, climate resilient society.

Promise to set road user charges that reflect the full lifetime capital and maintenance costs of heavy freight on our roads recognising that heavy freight on road increases congestion, has higher emissions, imposes health care costs on society, undermines the economics of rail and near shore marine freight alternatives.

Commit to setting and specifying a future pathway to reduce tail pipe emissions from vehicles to reduce public health costs and create certainty for vehicle purchasers and owners over years to come.

Commit to reform the emissions trading scheme so it operates with a binding cap on emissions that reduces gross emissions consistent with a net zero target that also specifies a maximum offset from carbon sequestration in short life exotic forests by 2050 and every year thereafter in order to increase certainty for land owners and businesses.

Commit to strengthen the the Climate Change Commission’s role and resource it to advise on climate policy, advocate and educate on climate policy, and hold the government to account for its actions, which impact on achieving climate budgets and plans, to increase the likelihood that climate policy withstands the pressure from political choices favouring short term gains over public interest in policy stability in the medium term.

Acknowledge that taxpayer support for high emitting industries, high emitting business practices and high emitting lifestyles delays the transition, wastes taxpayer funds, rewards vested interests, discourages innovation and increases the likelihood of a transition that is less fair and more disruptive as a result.

Acknowledge that the cost of living crisis is in part caused by energy price rises, food price rises, rates rises and increases in insurance premiums, that are in part reflecting the changing climate and are therefore foreseeable, requiring policy responses beyond usual monetary and fiscal policy responses of interest rate hikes and fiscal restraint.

Acknowledge that politicising climate policy and polarisation around extreme responses to climate change science, policy and action, is not in New Zealand’s national interest.

Rod Carr was Chair of the Climate Change Commission from 2019 to 2024. Republished with permission from Carbon News. Read the original article.

How much is climate misinformation shaping NZ Govt policy?

By Matt Halliday

While an inquiry into climate misinformation is sounding alarm bells about fossil fuel propaganda and its threat to the very foundations of society across the Tasman, we’re even more vulnerable to misinformation and unseen influence here in Aotearoa.

The Select Committee on Information Integrity on Climate Change and Energy submitted its report to the Australian senate last month. Unsurprisingly, they found that, in a post-truth world, bombarded by AI, social media and billionaire-owned broadcasters, misinformation is rife and could be considered a threat to Australia’s democracy.

We’re not talking about placard-waving activists or fringe political parties here. A former chief of the Australian Defence Force is talking about how climate misinformation is speeding our descent into catastrophic global heating that will “crash society as we know it”.

Meanwhile, back in Aotearoa, Resources Minister Shane Jones talks about the “moral hysteria of climate change.”

It’s not a coincidence that that quote comes from a speech he delivered in Taranaki, New Zealand’s oil fields, where he focussed on economic and energy security for the region, as he pledged to help his audience keep extracting our natural resources. These tactics are straight from the disinformation playbook started by big tobacco in the 1950s and ’60s and perpetuated by polluting companies ever since. Being “merchants of doubt” means that big oil has no need to overturn the scientific consensus. They only need to seed queries in the minds of the public (their customers) to keep the false controversy alive and maintain the status quo – oil as a daily concern. It’s also no coincidence that the main narrative of big oil’s advertising and PR campaigns has moved from energy security to fossil fuel dependence over the last 5 years.

Unfortunately, in some ways, they’re right. Our society does overwhelmingly rely on the supply of cheap oil to run the way it does. However, we now know what the consequences of continuing to live the way we do will mean. We’re seeing it in the extreme weather events that are increasing in frequency and intensity on both sides of the Tasman. What the Australian Select Committee has highlighted, is that these vested interests are doing everything they can to keep the fuel lines pumping rather than help the transition, despite what the sustainability pages on their corporate websites say.

What does this mean for New Zealand?

In some ways, we’re even more vulnerable to misinformation and unseen influence here in Aotearoa. Australia has lobbying laws. Anyone acting on behalf of third-party clients, trying to get into the ear of politicians, must be registered. We don’t have any such laws. In 2023, the Ministry of Justice was tasked with helping third-party lobbyists develop a voluntary code of conduct and review “different policy options for regulating lobbying activities.” However, the MoJ website says they’re currently “assessing the scale and scope of any review” and there have been no updates for almost two years. This leaves our politicians open to be influenced by big industry with deep pockets.

Just hours after announcing a new LNG terminal as the supposed solution to New Zealand’s energy worries, Climate Change and then-Energy Minister Simon Watts and Resources Minister Shane Jones were both at a breakfast event co-hosted by fossil fuel lobby group Energy Resources Aotearoa.

While the LNG plan has been slammed by multiple energy experts as locking in further dependence on foreign fossil fuels, Energy Resources Aotearoa head John Carnegie was in a small minority of commentators to welcome the LNG plan. He is also on record criticising the previous Labour Government for helping companies get off coal and gas and shrinking demand for fossil fuels in the process.

On the same day as the fossil fuel breakfast, it was revealed that New Zealand has sunk further in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, while the Government’s Anti-Corruption Taskforce released its first pilot report, flagging potentially billions of dollars in public-sector fraud.

New Zealand remains the only Five Eyes country without a whole-of-government national anti-corruption strategy. With no lobbying register – the OECD ranks us 34th out of 38 countries for regulating influence on policymaking. We have no cooling-off period for ministers entering lobbying. We have no beneficial ownership register and no independent anti-corruption commission.

Industry influence

Recent changes to tobacco laws offer a glaring example of industry influence. Tobacco regulation has been one of the most successful examples of public health regulation globally, with the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control now ratified by parties that represent over 90% of the world’s population.

Which brings us back to Shane Jones and his buddies.

The current coalition government repealed Aotearoa’s world-leading tobacco regulation. This was not something any of the coalition parties had campaigned on, yet it was one of the first actions taken in their first months in office. The Public Health Communication Centre outlined how closely politicians across all three coalition parties modeled their talking points on propaganda seeded by the tobacco industry. The difference between tobacco and climate change is that people noticed this break from the social norm. Smoking has lost its social license; decades of dedicated work by non-profits, health professionals and regulators meant that within my parent’s lifetime smoking went from being a signifier of cool to one of shame.

We’re not yet at that point with fossil fuels, which means that when our politicians repeat fossil fuel industry rhetoric (as Shane Jones does) it doesn’t jar us the way the tobacco rhetoric does. Fossil fuels are still a part of everyday life. Current conflicts have illustrated how over reliant our global society is on them. What the Australian Select Committee Report highlights is how much lobbying, sponsorship and disinformation are a part of keeping us reliant on them. It recognizes coordinated campaigns of disinformation amplified through various platforms. These campaigns work on us because they’re all closely tied to how embedded fuel companies are into everyday communities, often through their sponsorship of sport and cultural activities. Activists in WA have pointed out that with sponsorship of Nippers surf lifesaving, the Woodside logo appears about 42,000 times every Sunday in summer. Their logo appears in five different places on the uniform each kid wears.

Over here, BP have been sponsoring Surf Lifesaving NZ for almost 60 years. True, climate change wasn’t in the public consciousness when this partnership started. But it is now. These logos tell us stories of oil corporations saving lives, instead of the truth; use of these products is already taking more lives than smoking each and every year. Along with seeded disinformation (which turns into misinformation) this type of sponsorship and promotion helps us justify doing what we’ve always done, instead of being able to imagine a different future for Aotearoa’s next generation.

The Australian government is taking steps in the right direction. They’re now aware of the threat of coordinated disinformation campaigns and how they affect public consciousness. Hopefully they take the next step and turn these recommendations into policy that helps protect their people and our climate.

Aotearoa needs to catch up. Even though we’re a country known for our sheep, kiwis don’t like having the wool pulled over our eyes.

These corporate communication tactics have been used for decades to encourage mistrust in science. The rise of social media’s controversy-driven algorithm, and now AI’s self-reinforcing tendencies, have given these companies more tools to accelerate the doubt in science they’re peddling.

The question is: are we going to believe them, or do we believe the evidence we see in the extreme weather that’s becoming more frequent and changing the shape of New Zealand?


Matt Halliday is a lecturer and PhD student in Te Kura Whakapāho, the School of Communication Studies at AUT, where he is researching the role of advertising in the climate crisis. He is also a part of Comms Declare, and helped launched the Fossil Ad Ban campaign in Aotearoa earlier this year. Republished with permission from Carbon News.

Fasten your seat belts

By Robert McLachlan

Just a few weeks ago New Zealand’s aviation and tourism sectors were riding high. Summer flights were up 7% on the previous year, and returned to their pre-Covid levels for the first time.

Dec/Jan jet fuel up 7% in a year, up 57% since 2013/14.
Source: MBIE Energy Quarterly

All last year there were stories like “Christchurch Airport is entering a period of strong growth, with new and expanded air routes set to deliver a significant boost to Canterbury’s tourism, freight and export sectors” (The Press, June 2025). As late as 3 February this year, the CEO of Tourism Industry Aotearoa was saying “International arrivals are edging upwards, confidence has lifted across the sector, and operators are reporting strong bookings.”

On 3 March, three days after the war began, Tourism Minister Louise Upston said, “The Government welcomes data out today showing New Zealand’s tourism sector continues to go from strength to strength, driving billions into the economy.”

New Zealand wasn’t alone. Willie Walsh, director of the global airline body IATA, said in January, “2025 saw demand for air travel grow by 5.3% with international demand growing by 7.1% and domestic by 2.4%. This returns industry growth to align with historical growth patterns after the robust post-COVID rebound.”

The only dark clouds were the need for decarbonisation (“Governments whose economies grow because of aviation and whose citizens thirst for connectivity need to provide the supportive fiscal policy framework to rapidly accelerate progress”) and supply chain issues (“People clearly wanted to travel more, but airlines were continually disappointed with unreliable delivery schedules for new aircraft and engines, maintenance capacity constraints, and resultant cost increases.”)

IATA forecast essentially permanent growth of 4.2% per year. This far exceeds any ability of the industry to reduce emissions and is a recipe for continually increasing damage.

Source: MBIE Energy Quarterly, Stats NZ

Setting aside decarbonisation – each flight departing New Zealand uses 200 litres of jet fuel per passenger, emitting 500 kg of CO2, a number that has not budged in 20 years – how is that desire to travel more holding up?

Pretty well, it seems. Just yesterday (1 April – but apparently they weren’t joking), RNZ reported:

Despite the conflict and dire news about air travel price surges due to fuel costs, New Zealand consumers are still booking long-haul flights to places like Europe, says Julie White, chief executive of the Travel Agents’ Association of New Zealand.

Swapping the warmth of the northern hemisphere in July for a Queenstown skiing holiday is of little interest to some travel consumers at the moment, White says.

New Zealanders, in general, might have a bit of domestic travel fatigue due to the restrictions during Covid. Many since the Covid years have made travel an essential item in their budget rather than a discretionary one, says White.

“We’re still experiencing strong demand. Kiwis are really wanting to travel, and they are really hoping this is going to be over soon, so they are still booking travel.”

This is delusional and irresponsible. The Ministry of Transport’s own dashboard shows that the price of jet fuel has already more than doubled, which would add at least 30% to future ticket prices even before flight cancellations kick in.

Travelers could very easily find themselves stranded overseas with cancelled flights and no insurance. The BBC and Financial Times are reporting that the UK’s final shipment of jet fuel from the Middle East is arriving this week, with no more booked or on the water. Tourism professor Susanne Becken from Griffiths University wrote

Tourism’s dependence on (affordable and available) jet fuel has long been a known issue; yet the sector choses to ignore this massive challenge. All the discussions around decarbonisation aviation are much more than climate action, they are an insurance for the very future of this industry.

During the Covid pandemic I made the suggestion that countries should look into ‘minimum viable networks’ to find out what level of aviation is considered essential as opposed to discretionary. This would be very sensible risk management, and would – by default – include crises such as global pandemics (i.e. how much lack of connectivity can a country afford), climate change (managing the long-term risk of climate collapse), or fuel constraints.

Although all countries will be affected, New Zealand is more exposed than many, given our remote location, habituated frequent flying, and large tourist industry. (Pacific Islands are even more at risk.) International travel shut down once before, only six years ago. It looks like we are in for a re-run.

Driving in the wrong direction: why NZ’s oil consumption is at a 5‑year high

By Robert McLachlan

Getty Images

New Zealand’s latest quarterly energy report shows electricity production was above 90% renewable and emissions from generation fell to the lowest level on record.

But it also shows New Zealand’s oil consumption, which had fallen markedly after the COVID pandemic, has crept back up to reach its highest quarterly level in five years.

Oil now comprises its highest quarterly share of New Zealand’s overall energy emissions on record.

Of the total carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, 77% were from oil (mostly used for transport), 12% from industrial and domestic gas usage, 6% from coal, and just 5% from electricity generation.

Source: MBIE Energy Quarterly

Developing a coordinated energy strategy to reduce oil dependence would not only provide an effective climate response, but also protect New Zealand from recurring oil price and supply shocks.

The previous government had committed to a comprehensive strategy to transition to a renewable energy system in New Zealand’s first emissions reduction plan in 2022.

But the current government’s focus has shifted on energy security and it aims to boost energy supply by importing liquefied natural gas.

Missed opportunities to reduce oil dependence

Parts of New Zealand’s economy, particularly inflation and tourism, remain strongly linked to the price of oil.

During two previous periods of high oil prices, New Zealand missed the chance to weaken the country’s dependence on oil.

The 1978 oil shock was a severe hit to the economy; New Zealand’s oil consumption did not recover to its previous level until 1990.

The soaring oil prices hit New Zealand at a time of extensive government control of the economy under the National government of Robert Muldoon, whose “Think Big” strategy included building an experimental plant to produce petrol from natural gas.

This was intended to build energy independence, but unfortunately it proved to be costly and ineffective.

The 2008 financial crisis also involved extreme oil price spikes and a prolonged recession. Oil consumption did not recover until 2015. One planned response was to introduce fuel economy standards for new cars – a form of regulation already in place in most OECD countries.

Had these standards been put in place and gradually strengthened over time, New Zealand would now be in a much better place, with less pollution and less economic dependence on oil.

However, a change in government in late 2008 led to the cancellation of the planned standards. New Zealand now uses nearly twice as much transport oil per capita as the UK, where such standards have been in place since 2001.

New law changed NZ’s trajectory

The Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Act of 2019 was a turning point. Before that, total fossil fuel emissions were flat or trending up. Afterwards, a wave of investments in renewable electricity, in the decarbonisation of industry and in low-emission transport turned the trend around.

This was perhaps not just due to the specifics of the act, which includes five-yearly carbon budgets, but to strong pro-climate signalling from the government of the day.

A critical mass of society, from car buyers and dealers to New Zealand’s biggest companies, were investing to take steps away from fossil fuels.

Under the current government, both messaging and policy have changed. As Climate Change Minister Simon Watts has repeatedly stressed, New Zealand’s main climate tool is now the emissions trading scheme (ETS). However, this now covers only 35% of net emissions and is not an effective way to reduce oil use.

At the current price of NZ$40 per tonne of carbon dioxide emissions, the ETS adds only nine cents per litre to the price of petrol. Given New Zealand’s high car dependency, this has virtually no effect on existing drivers or on car buyers.

How to cut oil use in transport

In New Zealand, 80% of oil goes into air and land transport. An oil transition plan really means a transport plan.

Source: MBIE Energy Quarterly

There is a known way to turn off the tap on oil. The “avoid, shift, improve” framework is supported by three decades of experience.

Changing work patterns such as shorter work weeks and working-from-home arrangements can help avoid unnecessary travel. Better infrastructure for walking and cycling and public transport helps to shift transport and dramatically reduce oil use.

The remaining private vehicle travel can be improved through electrification. This requires a combination of incentives and stronger emissions standards, as the International Energy Agency reinforced this week.

At present, New Zealand is still moving in the wrong direction. Over the past decade, the total distance driven by light vehicles increased by 20%, while the distance driven by utility vehicles is up 55%.

Each utility vehicle has 50% higher carbon emissions than a (fossil-fueled) passenger car. These trends have outweighed the improvements from the rise of hybrid and electric vehicles.

There is a limit to how quickly New Zealand’s fleet can realistically be electrified. For a country with the world’s highest rate of car ownership, mass purchasing of new cars is not a good transport solution by itself.

But in any event, phasing out fossil fuels is required for a safe future and should happen in ways that build energy resilience and independence.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

We should have weaned off oil long ago

By Robert McLachlan

Yes, we should have weaned off oil long ago. The oil shocks of the 1970s would have been a good time to start. Failing that, the 2007 oil price spike that was one of the triggers of the Global Financial Crisis. Never mind. The third best time to start is now.

New Zealand’s oil consumption for road transport has nearly doubled since 1990. Preliminary data from MBIE suggests another 4% rise between 2023 and 2025.
Industry is doing it tough.

What are the drivers of this increase? More cars, obviously, but also more people, with each person driving further.

Here’s the breakdown over the past decade:

Impact on road transport CO2 emissions from change in…Change between 2013 & 2023
Population:+16.1%
Fuel economy of fossil-fueled car fleet:–15.6%
Distance driven in light vehicles, per person:+4.5%
Fleet shift from cars to utes:+4.5%
Proportion of electric driving–1.7%
Total change in CO2 emissions+4.2%

Utility vehicles emit 50% more than (non-hybrid) cars – 259 gCO2/km vs 175 gCO2/km – and the shift is at least partly cultural, with the twin-cab ute becoming a social norm. Utes now comprise 18% of the light vehicle fleet, do 23% of the kilometres, form 26% of sales, and emit 31% of light vehicle CO2. If that shift continues, as it appears to be doing, it forms a significant headwind to emissions reduction.

Lately, although the shift to hybrids is reducing emissions, fossil-fueled cars themselves are getting heavier and higher-emission.

What’s up with those diesel cars at 231 gCO2/km?! The average petrol hybrid at 121 gCO2/km does not even meet the 2026 fuel economy standard of 108 gCO2/km. Averaged over all sales, the target is being exceeded by 27 gCO2/km.

Overall, the picture is grim. On balance the country is no better prepared for an oil price or supply shock than we were in the 1970s – oil imports were 2.5% of GDP last year, compared to 1.8% in 1974. But in one respect, we do have an advantage. We know how we failed to seize the opportunity previously, and we know what will work this time.

As Tim Welch wrote last week,

New Zealand still has a choice, however. It already powers lights, hospitals and factories with renewable electricity. It could have powered a diverse transport system the same way, and it still can.

Every bus electrified, every cycleway built, every train funded is a direct reduction in exposure to the next crisis. The question now is whether New Zealanders begin to treat their car dependence not as a lifestyle choice but as a strategic liability.

A partial reckoning

By Robert McLachlan

Climate action continues in Aotearoa New Zealand

As 2025 winds to a close, I am writing from the Rodney district north of Auckland – Rodney being famous as the home of the Rodney & Otamatea Times which published this banger in 1912. (Andy Revkin of the New York Times brought it to wide attention in 2016.)

The 1912 article had been rediscovered a few years earlier thanks to “Papers Past”, a project of the National Library of New Zealand to scan old newspapers, that began in 2001 and continues to this day. As for the Rodney Times, founded in 1901, it ceased publication in July this year, along with many other New Zealand community newspapers.

The “coal consumption” story itself is a caption from an article by Frances Molina in the March 1912 issue of Popular Mechanics, a model popular science article of the day. It concludes with a reflective passage that could stand today:

This rapid publication of worldwide science news was possible because New Zealand had been connected to the rest of the world by undersea telegraph cable in 1876. Other science news on 14 August 1912: the world’s deepest bore dug in Silesia at 7348 ft; nickel kitchen implements; how camphor is made; a skipping machine which turns the rope and counts your skips (I can see that being a winner today); a Swiss proposal to build a tunnel linking the Black and Caspian Seas (an idea that reappeared in 2025); and (this one is real genius) a way of preventing buckets of water spilling on trains, namely a wooden lid.

I dabble a little in social media and, in my experience at least, what fires engagement is not outrage but good news, like New Zealand showing a possibly record-breaking run of days with zero coal- or gas-fired electricity:

No coal or gas-fired electricity reported in New Zealand on 20-21 or 23-31 December 2025. (There’s still about 0.9% of fossil co-generation, not shown.) Source: em6

Or this one, which also went off, showing super-exponential growth of solar power in New Zealand:

NZ grid-tied solar power grew 31% in 2023, 52% in 2024, 61% in 2025. Long may it continue. Still only 1.9% of total power generation to there is plenty of remaining scope. The 4th quarter of 2025 is likely to come in at the lowest emissions and highest renewable proportion on record. Utility solar was 41.2 GWh in Q2, 62.9 in Q3; distributed solar 128 in Q2, 148.5 in Q3. Source: MBIE Energy Quarterly. The lifecycle emissions of solar are 99% less than coal.

But posts showing bad news tend to do poorly:

Emissions from domestic fossil fuel combustion to September 2025. 70% of these are from oil, which (although still below peak) are flat.

However, that last graph is perhaps the most important, for today is the last day of the first emissions budget period, which ran from 2022 to 2025. The system of emissions budgets was set up by the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Act 2019, which unleashed a wave of low-carbon investment across the country. Even Fonterra, which only a couple of years earlier was still obscuring their role as the country’s largest coal burner, began to change. Officially, thanks to some dodgy accounting, we are on track to meet the first budget, although the final reckoning (including agriculture and forests) will not be in for another year.

We do, however, have nearly complete data for energy emissions. These show a dramatic change after the Zero Carbon Act changes had time to kick in:

2018-1960.9 Mt CO22% below 2007 peak
2020-2159.5 Mt CO2–2%
2022-2354.0 Mt CO2–9% (!!!)
2024-2553.9 Mt CO2no change; progress halted

The progress in 2022-23, the first half the budget period, is impressive. (However, 1/3 of the reduction was due to the closure of the Marsden Point oil refinery, which shouldn’t count as the emissions were shifted offshore.) Progress appears to have halted in the second half, and although climate action hasn’t completely halted, the constant barrage of anti-climate action and rhetoric from the government is having an effect.

Which brings me to my point. Top-10 lists are a year-end classic. But in this case it seems more appropriate to nominate the…

Government’s bottom 10 climate actions of 2025

And how hard it is to choose. I’ll start by ruling out things that are merely said, like Shane Jones’s comment on anti-coal protesters that “The high tide mark of this unicorn kissing green drivel is over,” or two out of three Government coalition partners proposing to leave the Paris Agreement. It’s hard to draw the line, though, as words have an effect too – like the Climate Change Minister telling Federated Farmers that we have no legal obligation or liability to meet the Paris targets. I’m looking at real actions that will likely lead to the most actual damage, either direct (by increasing pollution) or indirect (by fostering division). (A few sins of omission will also crop up.)

10. ETS failure. The Government may say the ETS is its main tool to control emissions, but the market says otherwise – the price of carbon credits has dropped from a high of $87 in September 2022 to $37 now. Each Government announcement seems to result in a slump: doubling the free allocation to Reio Tinto, rejecting advice to review free allocations, uncoupling the ETS from the Paris target, cutting the number of companies that must report their emissions by 55%. Since 2022, none of the 12 ETS auctions have cleared completely; 2 have partially cleared.

9. No action on aviation emissions. The First Emissions Reduction Plan included an item to prepare a plan to decarbonise domestic aviation. (While other actions were repeated, this one was not.) There has been no work on this. Instead, the group Sustainable Action Aotearoa (set up by the ERP) has been sidelined and their work on updating our State Action Plan for the International Civil Aviation Organisation stopped.

8. The Carbon Neutral Public Sector got the chop. This one is a repeat, as National already chopped it once before, in 2009.

7. No Energy Plan. In ERP1, we were promised a comprehensive Energy Plan by December 2024. There is no sign of it yet, only some brief, piecemeal documents and a series of anti-climate energy initiatives. (LNG terminal, anyone?)

6. Offshore oil & gas exploration to be restarted, with a $200 million public sweetener and going gentler on the industry’s clean-up requirements.

5. Overseas climate financing, largely to the Pacific, which was $450 million in 2024, was cut to $100 million.

4. An end to bipartisanship. In major changes announced for the formerly bipartisan Zero Carbon Act, the Climate Change Commission will no longer provide advice on Emissions Reduction Plans, and the Government will be able to amend Plans at any time without consultation. Between the loss of bipartisanship and the erosion of the system of checks, balances, and communication between the Commission, Government, and public, the Act is under threat.

3. Clean Vehicle Standard gutted. This one is close to my heart as I have been following this story at least since the incoming John Key government killed fuel economy standards for the first time, in 2009. We all know how the feebate was boosted into a fake culture war, and how the Standards themselves were then drastically weakened for future years. Now the penalties that car importers must pay for not meeting the standards have themselves been cut by 80% for 2026 & 2027 – the same method used by Donald Trump to get rid of US standards. The move was supported by patsy modelling from the Ministry, which claimed the move would have almost no effect on emissions. The industry had taken no action at all to try and meet the targets, instead seeing a way forward through lobbying. It appears that any pro-climate faction within the industry bodies has been defeated, and the hand of the industry to dictate its own regulations strengthened. The extra costs in fuel and climate damage run to many hundreds of millions of dollars. EV sales, which fell 70% in 2024, are stagnant, and road transport emissions (which fell after Covid, partly as a result of working from home) are tracking up again.

2. No action on CO2 target. The Climate Commission advised the Government to strengthen the 2050 CO2 target to net –20 MtCO2 per year, including international aviation and shipping. All advice was rejected.

And the very bottom Government climate action of 2025 is…

1. 2050 target weakened. The Zero Carbon Act was amended under urgency with no public input – even the public gallery was closed – to weaken the 2050 methane target under a spurious “no additional warming” excuse. As Christina Hood has written, this increases our total emissions by the equivalent of 500 years of operation of the Huntly power station and takes our 2050 target nearly back to 2011 levels of ambition.

Look at that, out of numbers already! I didn’t even have time to discuss the ongoing saga over the lip service paid to our 2030 Paris Agreement target, or over our new 2035 target which fails on multiple levels.

I may be writing from Rodney, but I live in Manawatū, where our property has just suffered its most catastrophic wind damage in at least three decades. Quoted in the Otago Daily Times about the catastrophic wind storm that swept Southland and South Otago on 23 October, Dr Nathan Melia said that weather and climate models struggle to predict such events, but that “studies of European wind storms indicate that climate change will increase the frequency of strong jets.”

I’m sorry I don’t have more good news for you to round out 2025. I will leave the last work to James Renwick, quoted in the above ODT article:

Asked if he can think of anything positive New Zealand is doing about climate change, anything to feel proud of, Victoria University of Wellington climate scientist Prof James Renwick looks bemused.

“As a former climate change commissioner, and an academic in the field, I can’t really.

“We were doing some great things a few years ago, but the current government has pulled back on the good things the previous government set up. And now they’re gradually undermining the commission and the Zero Carbon Act, and the agriculture sector is getting an absolute free ride. But they’re spending, what, $50 billion on new roads?”

New Zealand’s Strategic Foreign Policy Assessment

by Heidi O’Callahan

A graphic from the previous Assessment, conducted in 2023 under the previous government.

[The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade is undertaking its triennial Strategic Foreign Policy Assessment. The Ministry writes: “The Assessment will examine the international context New Zealand will navigate in the decade to 2036, and what this means for us. The Assessment will consider the most important changes and drivers we see happening in the world, what they mean for New Zealand, what those changes mean for our relationships, and what they mean for our region — the Pacific and the Indo-Pacific.” Heidi O’Callahan’s submission is below. She would love to read other people’s submissions that tackle other (climate-exacerbated) topics, like overfishing, war, peacekeeping, humane treatment of refugees, terrorism, the scam economies and cyber security.

Submissions can be made at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/J7J8P9V. Submissions close at 5pm on 24 December 2025.]


What are the big international issues you think New Zealand will have to navigate over the next 10 years, and what are the opportunities you think New Zealand can pursue?


The big international problems we must navigate are biodiversity loss and climate change,
as well as the poverty, inequity, migration, societal breakdown and geopolitical instability
exacerbated by these problems. To navigate these issues successfully requires accepting
the root cause: an unsustainable economic paradigm of exploitation centred on the pursuit of
economic growth.


Above all, our economy needs to operate within planetary limits; it must become more
circular, socially-positive, and ecologically regenerative. Our best opportunities for
international trade lie in low-carbon, high-value intellectual innovation. The current industries
of bulk commodities (timber, milk products, meat, etc) and international tourism must be
scaled back significantly. The scale of these industries cannot be justified on a climate basis,
and their pollution and transport impacts are directly damaging to New Zealanders’ health,
accessibility and freedoms.


What do you consider New Zealand’s foreign policy needs to do to protect and advance our interests in the world over the next 10 years?


Our government needs to act domestically to protect and advance our interests, if our
foreign policy is to have a chance of helping us on the international front. We are currently
witnessing the opposite; the government is introducing policy and legislation that is directly
undermining our safety and wellbeing. This is happening across all spheres: Te Tiriti,
transport, agriculture, education, health, climate, housing and social wellbeing are examples.
In climate alone, the government has 1) unethically scrapped policies designed to reduce
emissions, 2) reduced the climate targets on the basis of no evidence, 3) decided against
bringing agriculture into the ETS and 4) indicated they will baulk at paying the bill for
international credits to cover emissions that such a climate-ignorant set of actions creates
(despite buying credits being the centrepiece of the National Party’s otherwise non-existent
climate policy.)


MFAT cannot operate with any integrity on the international stage alongside such appalling
government backsliding. So, while New Zealand’s foreign policy needs to support
international climate regulations and rules that force wealthier countries like us to reduce
emissions rapidly and pay for our past damage, it is hard for MFAT staff to be taken seriously
when representing a hypocritical government.


Nor will MFAT succeed at advancing our economic interests or pursuing opportunities; the
government’s climate denial will exclude us from markets and keep us out of key
international decision-making.


It’s not just in climate we are becoming a laughing stock. The GPS on Transport attracted
derision and ridicule from international experts. The UN Committee for the Elimination of
Racial Discrimination highlighted how quickly New Zealand is going backwards under this
racist government.


New Zealand’s foreign policy should advance real climate justice, climate action, the
commitment to international agreements on improving transport safety, reducing racial,
gender and age discrimination, the pursuit of improving the wellbeing of people in all
countries (especially indigenous people, and the educational and health opportunities for
girls and women), the promotion of sustainable practices and ecological regeneration, and
above all, the dismantling of the economic paradigm that has led to the destruction of water,
soil, air, natural and human resources.


But to pursue advancing these issues, diplomats should be able to draw on robust examples
of domestic New Zealand practices, with truth and integrity. Currently, they cannot.


For you, your community, organisation or business: What matters most in the world beyond New Zealand? What places and international relationships matter most? What do you think are New Zealand’s greatest strengths and weaknesses in our international engagement?


We should pursue strong and respectful relationships with our Pacific neighbours.
One important matter “in the world beyond New Zealand” is reducing hypermobility. The
majority of people in the world have never set foot in an aeroplane. Yet a small minority
continue to fly, with enormous climate impact, and we are all subsidising them to do so.
Flying is one of the most inequitable and destructive activities humans can indulge in. Our
foreign policy should seek international mechanisms and agreements to achieve substantial
reductions in aviation. As a country with apparently much to lose (but also much to gain in
other ways) from reducing international aviation, New Zealand is actually in a strong position
to lead this international work, through demonstration of substantial systemic change. New
Zealand needs to shrink our international tourism industry, and take steps to prevent our
wealthy people from travelling so much. Our government must stop promoting New Zealand
as a destination, stop allowing airport expansions, introduce taxes to prevent recreational
and other avoidable flights, and support the transition to sustainable industries, including
sustainable bike-, rail-, and coach-based domestic tourism.


The international relationships that matter most are in implementing and honouring the
various UN conventions and agreements – on traffic safety, on climate, on wellbeing and
health, etc. It seems, currently, that this government is rejecting the authority of the UN,
willingly forgetting what atrocities led to the creation of the UN in the first place!


Currently, the most important international relationships my community has is with experts
from other countries to help us try to make gains in evidence-based transport, agricultural,
energy and climate policies for New Zealand. Currently, much community effort is being
spent trying to undo or mitigate aggressive and regressive government actions that have no
basis in evidence or accepted practices. It is very sad to see this waste of human toil and
effort, which could be being used to build a better New Zealand.


Also important are the relationships with international experts on democracy. New Zealand’s
poor democratic practices are stifling our progress. Deliberation and informed
decision-making are the basis of good democracy. New Zealand will not thrive and we will
not make the most of opportunities while most decisions are being made on the basis of
misinformed opinions, corporate lobbying, misguided pursuits of economic growth, and
populism.


New Zealand’s foreign policy should promote the international development of a body of
knowledge about modern democracy. Such an international resource would be useful for all
kinds of decision-making, and could help dispel the damaging myth that “one person one
vote” is a sufficient basis for democracy.


New Zealand’s greatest strength in our international engagement is the goodwill built up over
many decades by good diplomacy and leadership. While there has been a low bar for what a
“good” country should do to improve the welfare of poorer countries and to pursue
development goals, at least New Zealand often tried to be one of the more enlightened
OECD countries. Internationally, the standard must improve. Unfortunately, New Zealand is
not stepping up. The goodwill is evaporating rapidly.


Our biggest weakness in international relationships is the lack of integrity in our domestic
policies.


Do you have any other thoughts on the international context you would like the team to consider?


How the climate changes depends on emissions right now and over the next few years. Net
zero by 2050 is necessary but by then it will be largely irrelevant; the important point is the
emissions trajectory to get there. Bureaucrats and leaders believe they face difficult
decisions currently and rarely prioritise emissions reductions. Yet the different climate
pathways will determine the options in front of future decision-makers, who will have fewer
resources to be able to draw upon, will be functioning in more urgent circumstances, and are
likely to be working within weaker institutions.


When this is fully understood, it is clear that decision-making is unlikely to get any easier!
We must stick to ethical action that will help decision-makers in the future. We must invest to
pursue rapid and significant emissions reductions, and rapidly transform our systems so they
are low carbon. We must acknowledge that the true social cost of carbon is orders of
magnitude higher than what our ETS scheme uses; much larger than what Europe is using.
We must be responsible international neighbours, and ensure poor countries don’t have to
make decisions between climate action and social or economic health.


None of this can be delayed while climate deniers have their turn at power plays in politics.
Quality foreign policy, in the absence of quality domestic policy, is akin to “polishing a turd”.

NZ’s government wants tourism to drive economic growth – but how will it deal with aviation emissions?

Robert McLachlan, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa – Massey University

Following a brief dip during the COVID pandemic, aviation is back in a growth phase.

Globally, passenger traffic is projected to grow by 3.8% annually over the next 20 years. In New Zealand, this optimism is reflected in Jetstar’s expansion plans for its domestic and trans-Tasman services and Auckland Airport’s airfield extension.

The government has welcomed the trend and sees the aviation and tourism industries as key drivers of economic growth.

But climate impacts of flying are rarely mentioned, even though the government is currently considering whether or not to include emissions from international aviation and shipping in New Zealand’s net zero 2050 target, as recommended by the Climate Change Commission.

Emissions from New Zealand’s international aviation and shipping are equivalent to about 9% of the country’s net domestic emissions. Without action to reduce emissions from these sectors, they could grow to a third of domestic net emissions by 2050, according to the commission.

Climate Change Minister Simon Watts is expected to announce a decision next month.

New Zealand’s action plan for aviation

In September, the newly established Interim Aviation Council released an aviation action plan. It covers regulation, innovation, economic growth and emissions.

The plan’s ambition is that New Zealand will be:

reducing the use of fossil fuels and transitioning to clean energy, in line with New Zealand’s target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

In a new report, we have analysed the plan in the context of New Zealand’s international commitments.

First, let’s backtrack to 2021 and New Zealand’s first emissions reduction plan. That also included work to decarbonise aviation by setting specific targets, implementing a sustainable aviation fuel mandate and establishing a public-private leadership body.

That body, Sustainable Aviation Aotearoa (SAA), was set up in 2022. But there is no word yet on the targets or mandate. The SAA has never published any minutes, work plans, calls for evidence or advice.

Its initial balance of public and private membership became skewed in favour of industry, with more airlines and oil companies (Airbus, Boeing, Exxon Mobil, British Petroleum, Z Energy, and Channel Infrastructure) joining the group than organisations representing the environment.

Of 49 members, only three (one from the Climate Change Commission and two from the Ministry for the Environment) have an environmental focus.

New Zealand’s second emissions reduction plan, published last year, mentions aviation emissions only briefly, commenting that:

the government’s role is to facilitate industry discussions through existing forums, consider regulatory barriers and ensure New Zealand’s interests are represented on the international stage.

That statement is incorrect. The government’s role, as specified in the Climate Change Response Act, is to prepare sector-specific policies to reduce emissions. But the Climate Change Commission has reviewed these policies and found them to be inadequate – it found virtually all policy-driven goals to cut emissions were at risk of not being achieved.

Global goal for net-zero flying

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has a goal of net-zero international aviation emissions by 2050. A key task for New Zealand, one of 193 member nations, is to determine how we should implement this.

International aviation is currently a large, unregulated source of emissions. In 2024, just the first outgoing legs of flights from New Zealand emitted 3.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, equivalent to 12% of all domestic emissions from fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) combined.

States have committed to mapping out plans to cut aviation emissions and submit them to ICAO. New Zealand’s plan was already overdue in 2022. Although it appears the SAA has done some work on this, no plan has been submitted yet.

Plans from other countries, including the United Kingdom, give some idea of the challenge. They describe a mixture of low-carbon fuels, efficiency gains and offsetting – but add these won’t get us all the way.

Additional measures such as carbon removal and demand management will be required. The UK’s sustainable aviation fuel mandate began this year and will strengthen every year, with airlines facing penalties of about NZ$11 per litre for missing targets.

As the UK’s action plan notes:

Most options for aviation decarbonisation rely on new technology, the development and uptake of which is extremely uncertain, owing to the uncertain nature of technology readiness and cost of technology over time.

This is not the government’s task alone

Aviation is part of a wider system. Passengers, tourism operators, airports, airlines, fuel companies and the government all share responsibility for the sector’s requirement to cut emissions.

Failure to deliver can lead to a loss of trust and impede progress. The tourism industry is crucial for New Zealand, and it is notable that the Tourism Industry Association supports the entry of international aviation into emission targets.

It appears Sustainable Aviation Aotearoa has not achieved its core purpose to “provide advice and coordination to accelerate the decarbonisation” of New Zealand’s aviation sector.

The Interim Aviation Council may be heading the same way. It has no environmental representation and assigns no actions to the Ministry for the Environment. Nor does it mention the regulation of emissions, which is the only way to simultaneously achieve environmental goals and lower uncertainty for investors.

As the permanent council is formed, it should operate openly and balance state, industry and public interests.

The author acknowledges the contribution by Paul Callister.

Robert McLachlan, Professor in Applied Mathematics, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa – Massey University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

NewZealandaviationpolicy2025Download

Fast, sustained phase-outs of fossil fuels are happening: a look at the best-performing countries in the coal and transport sectors

By Robert McLachlan

I was recently introduced to climate scientist James Dyke’s excellent newsletter, Eccentric Orbits, and the first article I read there opened with this:

This is our current moment: climate change by almost every single measure is getting worse while action on phasing out fossil fuels is slowing down or even stalling.

It’s true that climate change is getting worse – it will continue to get worse until emissions fall to near zero. But is action on phasing out fossil fuels really stalling?

There are certainly terrible developments in many places. But I want to point at that in some sectors in some countries, the phase-out of fossil fuels is definitely not stalling – it’s accelerating. Therefore, faster action is at least possible.

I decided to look at two sectors, coal and transport. They are both very large (being 40% and 20%, respectively, of global CO2 emissions, or 2 resp. 1 tonne of CO2 per person on average) but are very different.

To give an idea of the scale of the task, to phase out the burning of fossil fuels by 2050 means cutting emissions by about 0.2 tCO2 per person each year for the next 25 years. That is just the average value – cuts will have to be faster in the richer and higher-emitting countries.

Here are the 26 countries that have been phasing out coal the fastest over the past decade:

The average rate of decline for these countries was 0.18 tCO2 per year. Data: Our World in Data

For most of these countries, the phase out was twice as fast in 2018-2023 as in 2013-2018 – a dramatic acceleration. The 26 countries reduced coal emissions by an average of 0.18 tCO2/person every year for a decade.

EU emissions from coal fell another 13% in 2024 (not shown).

This was achieved through concerted policy and planning maintained over a long period.

Here are the five worse performers, for comparison:

Transport is very different to coal. The coal sector is dominated by a few large factories and most coal is used to generate electricity, where there are now cost-effective alternatives. Transport is highly dispersed and is shaped by social norms and by stupendous amounts of massive infrastructure – particularly so for cars. Transport emissions in many developed countries are dominated by private cars. The standard solution – travel less; walk, bicycle, and take public transport more; and electrify the remainder – all involve changes to people’s behaviour that can be contentious. (In France, when it was proposed to lower the speed limit on two-lane highways from 90 to 80 km/h, two-thirds of the speed cameras in the country were destroyed by protesters.)

New Zealand’s transport/climate policy is really only just getting started, and has undergone wild swings right out of the gate. So I was surprised to see that emissions from cars have not rebounded since Covid:

Source: UNFCCC + MBIE Energy Quarterly

The decline, about 15% (while population grew 7%), cannot be due solely to EVs or more efficient cars. Emissions of new cars are down by a quarter since 2019, but it takes time to turn over the fleet. The emissions of the average car on the road are only down 6%. So most of the decline must be due to something else. Driving less, due to working from home and the recession, are the two possibilities that come to mind. A surge in walking, biking, or public transport would have to be huge to make an effect of this size.

Even more surprising, the same thing appears to be happening in other countries too. New Zealander Robbie Andrew, who works at the Center for International Climate Research, Oslo, Norway, has kindly added road transport emissions data for the sixty-odd countries that he tracks. Many countries (but not all) have shown sustained falls in car emissions.

Of course, the standout example is Norway, where virtually all new cars are now electric. Norway will continue to see car emissions fall steadily to zero.

The surprise is that falls in other countries are almost as large as in Norway. New Zealand reduced from 1.44 to 1.16 tCO2 per person over 2018-2023, Norway from 0.92 to 0.63. The average reduction for the top 10 performers is 0.23 tCO2 per person (21%) over 5 years. That is outstanding for what is supposed to be a tough sector. What’s less clear is whether these reductions (if they are due to behaviour change) can persist and accelerate in the future.

Canada’s emissions are understated here as (like the US) they list most SUVs as light trucks. See below or examine the full data.

The same effect is seen for all road transport emissions (including trucks, utes, and vans). Now the picture includes an impressive result from Finland (split data not available) and even the United States. (Data for the US is for 2022 as they haven’t submitted their 2023 data to the UN yet… we can guess why.) Norway now shows only the 6th biggest drop, behind Austria, Canada, Finland, New Zealand.

Sweden’s progress may stall as part of it was due to a strong biofuel mandate which has now been scaled back after a change of government, lowering fuel prices and increasing emissions. Norwegians are even crossing the border to get some of that cheaper fuel.

There’s a limit to what can be concluded from this kind of broad overview. Every country has a different emissions profile and different climate politics. But my takeaway is that fast phase-outs of fossil fuels – 5-10% per year, sustained and even accelerating over several years – have been shown to be possible, even in large and diverse sectors and in different countries.

Postscript added 10 July. For another way to slice it, here are the 10 countries that have increased their percentage of renewable energy (all energy, not just electricity) the fastest, ranked by average performance over the past decade. Progress is accelerating – the average increase for 2013-2018 was 0.4 percentage points per year (top 10, 1.3%), for 2018-2023 0.6 percentage points per year (top 10, 1.8%). At that rate getting to 100% will take 150 years. The rate needs to triple (ie match the current best countries) for safety. Note that the top 10 countries are very different to each other. They are large and small, rich and poor, coming off a low or a high base. It’s easy to be discouraged looking at the scale of the task, but progress is possible.