Every three months the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment puts out a useful document called the Energy Quarterly. It provides up-to-the-minute data on fossil fuel emissions, well in advance of the more detailed submissions for the UN which currently only run up to 2022. It’s where I get the data for graphs like this one:
My point is to make regular reminders that addressing climate change means phasing out fossil fuels and that we are only just starting on that task. But the details are important and interesting, too, such as the recent upswing in electricity emissions due to the record-low lake inflows. This serves as a reminder that the ‘dry year’ problem isn’t yet solved, and that without the significant new wind and geothermal plants that were completed in 2023 and 2024 we really would have had an energy crisis.
The electricity generation data in the Quarterly also shows that a long static period in New Zealand’s power generation is coming to an end. The biggest trigger for investment was the passage of the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Act in 2019; projects that started construction in the following years are now operating.
However, future growth depends on anticipated future demand from climate action – phasing out fossil fuels and ‘electrifying everything’. The energy and transport sections of the final Second Emissions Reduction Plan do nothing to promote electrification, placing this recent growth at risk.
But what about the big picture on energy?
In addition to the Quarterly, MBIE produces an annual report, the latest being New Zealand Energy 2024. Here’s their summary:
The report includes many graphs, but not one showing what to me is the most striking development: total energy use has been falling for six years, and is now down nearly 10% from its peak in 2017.
Here ‘renewable’ energy is made up of hydropower (46%), geothermal (25%), biofuel (mostly wood – 23%), wind (6%), and solar (1%). Modern renewable electricity generation (wind, geothermal, and solar) was 41 PJ in 2023 or 6% of final energy demand. Here energy is what MBIE calls ‘final energy demand’, which includes the full energy content of fossil fuels and electricity but not the waste heat component of geothermal. The ‘substitution method’ used by Our World in Data (which upscales renewable energy to compensate for the thermal inefficiency of burning fossil fuels) is not used.
Coal, gas, oil, and even renewables are all down from their peaks. Looked at per capita, the effect is even more striking:
Energy use per person has been declining fairly steadily since 2001, and is now down 28% from peak. Is twenty-two years long enough to call it a trend?
There are probably many factors at play here that would be hard to untangle. At first sight the data doesn’t fit either of the convenient narratives on energy, ‘transition’, in which modern renewable energy gradually replaces fossil, or ‘more and more‘, in which new energy sources simply add to humanity’s rapacious demands.
Most likely a combination of factors – energy efficiency, deindustrialisation, and behaviour change – are at work. Initial indications are that all three of those effects were still in play in 2024, as energy-intensive industries shut down or scaled back. When we do get started on mass electrification and serious behaviour change, the energy decline will accelerate.
It’s now official. Last year was the warmest year on record globally and the first to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. This doesn’t mean it’s too late to rein in further warming, but the ambition required rises with each delay in action.
New Zealand is no exception. Current climate policies are no longer a sufficient contribution to the global effort to keep warming at 1.5°C, according to the Climate Change Commission’s first review of the country’s 2050 climate target.
New Zealand’s current 2050 target has two components. Methane emissions from livestock must be cut by 24% to 47% below 2017 levels and emissions of all other greenhouse gases must reach net zero. But the commission has made three main recommendations to raise ambition:
a net negative target for emissions of long-lived gases (carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide) by removing 20 million tonnes more from the atmosphere than is released each year
a higher target range for biogenic methane emissions to reach at least 35% to 47% below 2017 levels
and the inclusion of emissions from international shipping and aviation.
The commission says these changes would bring New Zealand closer to “net zero for all gases”, in line with what is needed to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.
The 2050 target review was the last effort for the commission’s outgoing founding chair, Rod Carr, who has become a significant voice for climate action. In his closing words to parliament, he said:
Those who continue to promote the combustion of fossil fuels in the open air without permanent carbon capture and storage are, in my view, committing a crime against humanity.
The threshold for recommending a change is high. The commission must consider nine key areas and find “significant” developments that justify recommending a different target.
It found three significant changes occurred since the current target was set in 2019.
1. Global action is ahead of New Zealand
While other countries’ current policies, pledges or targets are not sufficient to keep temperature rise at 1.5°C, many countries now have more ambitious targets than New Zealand.
Australia, Japan, US, Canada, EU and Ireland all adopted full net-zero targets in 2021. Finland and Germany have or are considering net negative targets. Among countries with high biogenic methane emissions, several now have full net-zero targets.
2. Scientific understanding of climate change has changed
Climate impacts are appearing sooner and with more severity than the scientific community understood when the target was set in 2019.
3. The burden shifts to future generations
The increased risks and impacts of climate change have implications for inter-generational equity. Delaying action shifts costs and risks to future generations.
The commission’s report also explores New Zealand’s reliance on large-scale commercial exotic afforestation to meet its climate targets. This is one reason why Climate Action Tracker rates New Zealand’s response as highly insufficient and commensurate with a 4°C world.
Carbon in trees is part of the biosphere and will never be stored as permanently as fossil carbon. To take a case in point, Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 (made worse by climate change) damaged forests, farms and infrastructure, and removed the social licence for forestry in the region.
How the recommended target was set
The commission’s work is tightly prescribed by law. It looked at four possible ways of sharing the global 1.5°C task: equal per capita emissions, national capacity, responsibility for historic warming and the right of all peoples to sustainable development.
New Zealand’s current target does not meet any of these standards, but the commission says the new target would at least meet the “national capacity” criterion and would be feasible and acceptable. However, it would still see New Zealand contributing two to three times its share of global warming this century.
The commission’s assessment is independent of any global warming metrics such as GWP100 (currently the UN standard). Instead, the commission computed New Zealand’s historical and future contribution to temperature rise directly. Both commonly used historical baselines, 1850 and 1990, yield similar results.
New Zealand’s government is currently particularly at odds with the commission’s recommendation on biogenic methane. It appointed a separate advisory panel last year which put forward a target consistent with causing “no additional warming” to the planet from agricultural methane emissions.
This graph shows the contribution to warming from emissions in New Zealand (1850–2100) under the current 2050 target. Climate Change Commission, CC BY-SA
But the commission rejects this idea, finding that unless the rest of New Zealand’s target were to be strengthened significantly, this would not be consistent with the Paris Agreement or the country’s own climate law.
International aviation and shipping emissions
In a quirk of climate diplomacy, international aviation and shipping emissions were excluded from the original 2050 target. But as the commission points out, they most definitely contribute to global warming and are covered by the temperature target of the Paris Agreement.
Other countries are moving in these areas and the International Civil Aviation and maritime organisations have net zero 2050 goals in place. Air New Zealand and the global shipping giant Maersk both support including these emissions in the 2050 target, which the commission finds to be achievable under multiple different pathways.
New Zealand’s dependence on shipping and air transport is a challenge. The commission puts the combined emissions from these sectors at 6.7 megatonnes – 20% of total CO₂ emissions and close to all industrial or all passenger car emissions. The aviation industry in particular is planning for growth, which, unless addressed, will blow the 1.5°C carbon budget both for New Zealand and globally.
Drawing on “net zero pathways” prepared by the international aviation and shipping industries, the commission finds that including these sources in New Zealand’s revised 2050 target would be achievable. The sectors would not necessarily have to enter the Emissions Trading Scheme, but the status quo (under which these sectors do not attract GST, fuel tax or a carbon charge) is inequitable with other sources of economic activity.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The author acknowledges the assistance and contribution of Paul Callister.
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