All countries signed up to the Paris Agreement have until the end of December to file Biennial Transparency Reports, sharing their progress with the international community.
Photo: 123RF
The government’s first report under the Paris Agreement gives no answers on where it will source 84 million tonnes of planet-heating pollution savings currently missing from it’s climate plans.
All countries signed up to the Paris Agreement have until the end of December to file Biennial Transparency Reports, sharing their progress with the international community.
New Zealand’s was published on Wednesday.
It said “the scale of emission reductions required to meet the target is greater than what can be achieved in an economically feasible way through domestic action alone”.
But it did not say how the government planned to go about filling the gap.
The Biennial Transparency Reports gives nations a glimpse of how others are tracking.
The process allows scrutiny of the world’s progress towards the goal countries agreed to, of keeping the planet inside 1.5C-2C of added heating. That requires global emissions to peak by 2025 and roughly halve by 2030, according to the world’s top body of climate scientists.
According to the Global Carbon Budget project, global fossil fuel emissions reached a record high in 2024, although the rate of growth had slowed.
Two part target
New Zealand’s target for 2030 is designed to be met in two parts, with around a third of the emissions savings coming from inside the country and a larger contribution from action overseas.
Together the contributions need to add up to a 50 percent reduction in net emissions, below gross 2005 levels by 2030.
In real terms, from 2023 onwards, the country had 430 million tonnes of emissions left to “spend” in it’s emissions budget before 2030.
The domestic part of the overall target is broken into two five-yearly emissions budgets.
The transparency report confirmed the country was on track to meet those domestic budgets by reducing emissions here and mainly sucking in carbon dioxide with pine trees.
But the report did not address in detail how the government planned to save an additional 84 million tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent by 2030, the portion that was intended to be met from overseas when the target was set.
If these savings were not procured from overseas, they would have to be met some other way, or New Zealand would miss it’s first Paris target, something the government had said it wouldn’t do.
The transparency report said the gap remained around 84 million tonnes, which included the impact of new climate measures announced by the government this month.
It said: “New Zealand will continue to prioritise domestic action to achieve [it’s 2030 target]. However, the scale of
emission reductions required to meet the target is greater than what can be achieved in an economically feasible way through domestic action alone.”
The report said New Zealand was “exploring options for international cooperation”, listing high-level agreements to cooperate on climate change and sustainability with the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore.
But while it acknowledged New Zealand needed overseas help, it did not say how the government intended to get it.
Confusing time
When the current 2030 target was set, the gap was more like 100 million tonnes, but the level of domestic emissions-cutting action had outperformed projections.
To meet their targets, Singapore, Switzerland and others had used trading mechanisms under the Paris Agreement to buy emissions savings from less wealthy nations such as Thailand, funding projects like replacing diesel buses with electric ones in Bangkok.
The idea of allowing trades was that countries who could not – or could not afford – to make all the emissions savings they needed at home to meet their Paris targets, could achieve the same climate benefits cheaper somewhere else.
But the coalition had given mixed messages about whether it would go through with making those kinds of deals, citing the fact that involved spending money in other economies.
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay said New Zealand would not be spending money on emissions savings offshore.
Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay told Morning Report recently New Zealand would not be spending money offshore, despite expert advice to the Government saying it was the only way to meet the Paris target.
“The idea of sending billions overseas is not palatable to anybody in New Zealand,” McClay said.
Asked to clarify if this was true, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon referred RNZ to Climate Change Minister Simon Watts, who implied McClay had mis-spoken but also said no purchasing deals had been made.
In his statement responding to McClay’s comments, Watts told RNZ: “The Government currently has no formal plans to purchase offshore. However, we are realistic about the need to cooperate with other countries and are considering all options.”
Watts had advice from officials saying the price was getting higher the longer purchases were delayed.
In the background, Government officials had worked on a protocol for making sure any credits or emissions savings bought from overseas resulted in legitimate cuts to emissions.
Also in the background, Treasury had advised Ministers Watts and Nicola Willis that if the government made a statement to the effect that it had signed a deal or made a firm commitment to do so, the $3-23 billion estimated cost of purchasing offshore credits between now and 2030 could start appearing as liability on the government’s books.
As of earlier this year, Cabinet had not given government officials permission to seal any deals.
The picture to 2050
The report laid out projections on how New Zealand’s emissions were expected to change between now and 2050.
The tally excluded the impact of new measures just announced in the government’s second Emissions Reduction Plan, such as capturing and storing carbon from fossil fuel fields under ground.
Together those measures were expected to lower emissions by 5 million tonnes between now and 2030, on top of what’s counted in the transparency report. Those savings would go in the next report in two years time.
The raw tally of New Zealand’s emissions for 2022 – what the climate actually sees – was 59 million tonnes of greenhouse gases, including forestry’s impact on sucking carbon dioxide out of the air.
That was 32 percent higher than in 1990, when the tallies began.
From 59 million in 2022, emissions are expected to rise to 64 million in 2025 (rising mainly because of lower forestry removals that year), before falling to 54 million in 2030 and further to 34 million tonnes in 2050.
That compares with 44 million tonnes of net emissions in 1990, 52 million tonnes in 2000 and 53 million in 2010.
The Climate Change Commission recently recommended New Zealand should aim for negative emissions by 2050.
The government uses a different method to track it’s own progress from the figures listed above.
It uses a “target” accounting method for measuring progress towards it’s Paris target, which smoothes out forestry cycles by removing some of the harvest-related spikes and troughs in carbon sequestration by the pine logging industry.
In 2022, the most recent year of official measurements, emissions using that “target” method were around 73 million tonnes, down by 2.6 million tonnes on the year before and 15.6 per cent lower than 2005, the government’s base year for it’s Paris target.