Friday, March 29, 2024

Report on NZ’s human-generated GHG emissions

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New Zealand’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continue to rise, with new figures showing they rose 2% from 2018-19.
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The Ministry for the Environment (MfE) has released the 2021 Greenhouse Gas Inventory – an annual report documenting all of NZ’s human-generated GHG emissions and removals since 1990.

The latest report covers the period from 1990 to 2019.

The report states gross emissions in 2019 comprised 46% carbon dioxide, 42% methane, 10% nitrous oxide and 2% fluorinated gases.

In 2019, the agriculture and energy sectors were the two largest contributors to NZ’s gross emissions in 2019, at 48% and 42% respectively.

Between 1990 and 2019, gross emissions have increased by 2%, mainly because of increases in methane from dairy cattle digestive systems and carbon dioxide from road transport.

The 2% rise in both gross and net emissions between 2018 and 2019 was mainly due to emission increases in manufacturing industries and construction, and public electricity and heat production.

The Greenhouse Gas Inventory is one of NZ’s mandatory reporting obligations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. 

It takes about 15 months to collect and analyse the data for each year and prepare it for publication, so the effects of the covid-19 outbreak on emissions won’t be fully known until the 2022 inventory submission is published.

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