Analysis: Greenhouse gas emissions fell for the third year in a row in 2022, confirming what preliminary data showed last year: We are successfully bending the climate curve.

While the drops in 2020 and 2021 may have been driven by lockdowns and other Covid-19 related behaviours, there were few to no restrictions on daily life in 2022. Nonetheless, emissions in energy, including road transportation, continued to fall. Gross emissions (excluding forestry) were at their lowest level in the 21st century.

According to the Ministry for the Environment, while the number of kilometres travelled by petrol vehicles stayed the same between 2021 and 2022, the amount of petrol consumed decreased due to the proliferation of more efficient cars.

The figures back up the findings of preliminary data released by Statistics New Zealand in July. New Zealand’s official climate pollution tally is released on a lag of more than a year. These figures, which are exhaustively modelled and calculated from every source imaginable, are submitted to the United Nations and used to measure progress against our climate goals.

The Stats NZ numbers are more up-to-date, coming in quarterly releases on a lag of just three months. While they aren’t quite as robust and are calculated slightly differently, they have lined up well with the official figures in the past.

Looking at the latest Stats NZ figures allows us to see beyond 2022. In 2023, according to Stats NZ, emissions did rise slightly, albeit remaining well below pre-pandemic levels. That was caused by an increase in transportation service emissions – road freight and domestic aviation – which have yet to return to 2019 levels.

Still, in almost every other sector, the direction of travel was downwards. Emissions from primary industries fell by 624,000 tonnes, alongside a 167,000 tonne decrease in energy emissions and a 286,000 tonne decline in the manufacturing sector.

Stats NZ doesn’t break down much beyond sectors, so it’s hard to tell exactly what drove the decrease in emissions from agriculture, forestry and fishing. One possibility is the ongoing conversion of sheep and beef farms to plantation pine. Another is the adoption of new farming practices and low-emissions sheep that can provide some emissions reductions.

The direction of travel is now virtually set in stone. Emissions projections released by the environment ministry last year showed New Zealand was on track to meet the first three carbon budgets and the 2050 net zero target, though not the targets for agricultural and waste methane.

The Climate Change Commission, in draft advice released last week, also concluded New Zealand is on track to meet most of its targets. In fact, we have made faster progress, particularly in electrifying transport and industry, than it had anticipated as recently as 2021.

All of this comes with an important caveat, however. The projections by the environment ministry and the commission were based on policies set in place by the last government, many of which have been scrapped. The list of axed policies include the Clean Car Discount which incentivised that electric vehicle uptake and government subsidies for industrial fossil fuel users to decarbonise.

Likewise, the reductions achieved in 2022 and sustained in 2023 were accomplished at least partially as a result of these policies. Some of them are still here – the most powerful climate policy, the Emissions Trading Scheme, has escaped unscathed. But there is less certainty than there was six or 12 months ago.

It will take time for the impacts of the new Government’s decisions to flow through to our emissions data. These actions are unlikely to result in a wholesale reversal of direction, but they may well slow the pace of the transition.

The issue is that pace is still the one thing we haven’t got right. While emissions numbers are moving in the right direction, they aren’t doing so quickly enough.

There are serious benefits to acting ambitiously. The Climate Change Commission found there would be net social and economic benefits from moving more quickly to decarbonise industries and households as opportunities arise and technologies become available. Ditching our petrol and diesel vehicles alone could save $2.7 billion a year in reduced hospitalisations and increased productivity from banishing fossil fuel-related air pollution.

And there are also costs to our current, high-emissions lifestyle. Big ones.

A study published in the prestigious journal Nature on Wednesday found the greenhouse gases released by the world to-date will cause NZ$87 trillion in damages every year by the 2050s. That’s just from warming and precipitation and doesn’t account for increased frequency or intensity of extreme weather events.

These are shocking numbers. And they will only get worse for every tonne of greenhouse gas we continue to emit.

New Zealand’s achievement, of reducing emissions while growing the economy and setting out a feasible pathway to ongoing cuts to climate pollution, should be celebrated. But it is also only the first step. Now we have to walk that path.

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7 Comments

  1. You have until one minute before midnight today to make a submission on the Fast track Approvals Bill which among other things opens conservation land to coal mining.

  2. The ‘targets’ were always weak. Marc quietly reminds us of that. And do they look at the whole picture? Embedded (mining, transport, manufacture) emissions in imports are rarely talked about. And this new government is going about encouraging irresponsible behaviour in transport (ramping up car use in a transport scene already totally dominated by the personal motor car and more dangerous speed limits) and smoking, for example, all in the name of ‘freedom’. Part of a long history of human exploitation of the planet.

    1. At least we have a 3-year baseline to compare at the next election climate change policies of this Govt versus the last.

  3. Thank you for a seemingly balanced article. Hope & confidence are sorely needed.

  4. Saying “We are successfully bending the climate curve” is a bit misleading because some might take this to mean that we have a degree of direct control over New Zealand weather and climate by way of reducing our emissions.

  5. Moves to electrify transport and industry are mildly encouraging. But these first steps are of course the easiest and least painful ones. Further progress will mean facing the unpalatable reality that the economy cannot be decoupled from energy use and the exploitation of mineral resources.
    https://phys.org/news/2022-04-halve-energy-climate-catastrophe.html
    Given that mineral resources are finite and that fossil fuels are very energy dense, only a mainstream politician or a conventional economist would dare to argue that we can expect economic growth, in any real sense, to continue.
    Marc’s recent article https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/04/18/new-zealands-crisis-of-confidence suggests that people are losing faith in the future, and in politicians’ will to maximise citizens’ well-being. I doubt that this is just a New Zealand problem.
    I am unaware of any society in human history that has voluntarily downsized. Can we do it? Or will nature do it to us?
    What we face, now, goes far beyond just cutting GHGs. Tech ‘fixes’ such as carbon capture, pumped hydro, the deployment of biofuels and hydrogen, dietary supplements for stock feed – these are necessary but utterly insufficient.
    If we want a viable future, we need to reach a point where people who choose to sequester more than their share of Earth’s limited resources are regarded not as role-models, leaders, or captains of industry, but are seen for what they are – parasites.

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