New Zealand creates climate fund

The New Zealand government has created a NZ$4.5bn ($2.86bn) fund to spend on measures to lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions such as funding programmes to accelerate the take-up of electric vehicles (EVs), end the use of coal and financing studies on developing the country's hydrogen strategy and its offshore wind power generation sector.

The Climate Emergency Response Fund (CERF) will be funded from revenue generated from its Emissions Trading Scheme, New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern said.

Around NZ$1.2bn will be spent on the transport sector, to support the take-up of EVs, promote greater use of public transport and cycling and decarbonise New Zealand's freight system, New Zealand climate change minister James Shaw said.

New Zealand plans to introduce zero emissions buses from 2025 and have the national public transport fleet decarbonised by 2035, Shaw said. It plans to reduce emissions from freight transport by 35pc by 2035.

New Zealand also intends to end its reliance on coal with a ban on new low to medium temperature coal boilers and a phase out of existing ones by 2037.

The country's latest audited annual GHG emissions were 78.78mn t of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) in 2020, 20.8pc up from 65.19mn t of CO2e in 1990 but down 3.5pc or by 2.84mn t from 2019 levels.

New Zealand's energy sector accounted for around 40pc of the country's emissions and around 50pc is derived from the agricultural sector.

The announcement of the CERF funding was part of the New Zealand government's budget for the 2022-23 fiscal year to 30 June and came after last week's launch of the government's GHG emissions targets for three periods up until 2035.

The first New Zealand GHG emissions budget for 2022-25 sets average emissions at 72.4mn t/yr of CO2e or 8pc below 2020 levels.

By Kevin Morrison