Young Kiwis choose not to drive to reduce greenhouse gases

Saturday, 18 May 2019

Aaron Cox and Briony Bennett, who belong to the climate change organisation Generation Zero, have each decided not to own a car and prefer to walk or use public transport.

New Zealanders' love affair with cars and trucks is growing apace, despite the talk about the need to save the planet by cutting out greenhouse gases.

In 2017 Kiwis bought a record 338,000 new and imported vehicles, but at the same time 170,000 were scrapped. New Zealand has the world's third highest rate of vehicle ownership, at about 4 million.

But some people are bucking the trend and choosing not to drive, motivated in large part by their worries about climate change.

Wellingtonians Arron Cox and Briony Bennett are members of Generation Zero, a ginger group which wants to wake people up to the need for change if catastrophic warming is to be averted.

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'I've chosen not to drive cars because they have adverse effects on climate change and I want to reduce my carbon footprint,' Cox says. 'But also I think driving is an unhealthy way to get around and I'd prefer to bike, walk or catch the bus. And thirdly cars take up a lot of space in our cities and if we want to create more liveable cities we need to get rid of them as much as possible.'

Bennett has spent time overseas, where she got used to not needing a car.

'I spent most of my 20s in London and Paris where it was easy to walk, or you'd catch the metro or the tube. So when I moved back to NZ last year I didn't want to own a car, because of the expense of it, but also safety reasons.'

Arron Cox and Briony Bennett, who belong to the climate change organisation Generation Zero, have each decided not to own a car. They prefer to walk around Wellington city.

Environmental planner Cox and energy analyst Bennett both live in central Wellington, which they concede makes it easier not to own a car. Even so, Cox believes government and councils should be doing more to provide alternatives.

'In other cities and provincial towns there aren't other transport options so councils and government need to work together to give people more transport options so they can take up a shift to public transport.

'We need to move quickly to address carbon emissions from cars, I don't think we've moving fast enough, there's hesitancy from people living next to cycleways, council needs to recognise and address that. I think there needs to be more urgency and they need to prioritise that work,' Cox says.

Fossil-fuelled cars spew out carbon dioxide, which is a more lethal warming gas than the methane and nitrous oxide from livestock. Lingering in the atmosphere for thousands of years, CO2 needs to be reined in if warming of over 2C degrees Celcius is to be avoided by 2050.

In New Zealand most CO2 comes from cars, trucks, and planes, factories and making electricity. Almost half of our greenhouse gases come from animals but their methane and nitrous oxide have a life measured in decades.

New Zealand roads are becoming increasingly choked with traffic as we buy more and more cars.

Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Simon Upton recently made the distinction between the gases in the report Farms, Forests and Fossil Fuels: The next great landscape transformation.

Because CO2 is the most dangerous gas, he believes it needs to be treated differently to methane and nitrous oxide.

About 10 years ago, as the environment head of the OECD, Upton was struck by the difference between the two types. It resulted in the organisation's secretary-general calling in 2015 for 'the complete elimination of emissions to the atmosphere from the combustion of fossil fuels in the second half of the century'.

Upton says it was the first time a world leader had set such a time frame to avoid warming of no more than 2C from 2050.

Upton recommends industries that produce CO2 should not be able to offset their emissions by planting trees; instead they need to change the way they do things. Using trees as sinks should only be reserved for farming.

But using trees as a carbon sink is an article of faith that has been around since the 1990s; in fact as a government minister during that decade Upton helped conceive the policy that said it did not matter how carbon was taken out of the atmosphere, so long as it was.

Climate Minister James Shaw has rejected the recommendation to separate the way the different gases are dealt with.

'For the sake of providing policy stability and predictability for emitters and the forestry sector, the Government is committed to retaining the use of forestry off-sets for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions.'

A number of companies which are part of the Climate Leaders Coalition have already gone down the road of using forests as carbon sinks.

Z Energy is one of the members of the Climate Leaders Coalition. It is using forestry sinks to offset its own emissions.

Z Energy sustainability manager Gerri Ward says last year the company invested $1.5 million in permanent forest projects to voluntarily offset the emissions from its operations.

Air New Zealand, Z Energy, Contact Energy, and Genesis Energy have set up a forestry partnership called Dryland Carbon.

Some companies are planting radiata pine, which absorbs 30 tonnes of carbon per hectare a year, over a 30-year rotation. But others such as The Warehouse Group are buying marginal land and planting natives, which take up between 6 tonnes and 12 tonnes per hectare for the first 100 years.

Fonterra spokeswoman Carolyn Mortland says the dairy giant buys carbon credits, many of which are generated through forestry. Fonterra is looking at ways to promote planting on land that is not suitable for farming.

But assuming Upton's recommendation is adopted, and industries cannot use forests as sinks, how can they change the way they operate?

Transport

To judge by the figures, Kiwis are not about to drastically slow down their buying or use of cars. By 2017 they were driving 48.2 billion kilometres a year, a 6 per cent increase on 2016 and a 17 per cent increase over a decade.

Ministry of Transport deputy chief executive of regulation and data Kirstie Hewlett says 'this is not the direction we want to be moving in. More vehicles means more congestion and higher emissions'.

That said, as car ownership rates grow, many also stay parked in garages or by the kerb. Since 2001, the average annual distance travelled by a car has dropped from 13,250 kilometres to 11,750km.

And paradoxically, at the same time the numbers of cars are rising, fewer young people have driver licences. Only a third of people aged 15 to 24 have a driver licence compared with nearly half in 1989.

People could cut down on CO2 emissions by buying electric or hybrid vehicles, using public transport or bikes and scooters.

But so far there are only 12,000 electric vehicles in the country. Compare that to world leader Norway, where there were 62,000 new electric sales last year, almost 40 per cent of the total.

Norway's population is 5.2 million, to New Zealand's 4.7 million. It offers tax breaks and other incentives such as free parking for owners of pure electric cars.

One suggestion for New Zealand is at the least government departments and local councils could be ordered to buy electric cars when buying or replacing any.

Bennett says that while she could easily get to and from work in Auckland during the week, at weekends it was more challenging. However, because most taxis are either electric or hybrids, she was still choosing a greener option than her own car.

Z Energy says it cannot control the way people drive but is preparing for a low carbon future by investing in alternative, cleaner fuels and alternative mobility technologies.

Fonterra still uses coal to power many of its factories, although it is moving gradually to lower emission fuels.

The cost of offsetting emissions from the fuel its sells to motorists is estimated at $70m.

New Zealanders also love to fly, and since the country is at the edge of the world, they use up a lot of CO2 to get anywhere.

Air New Zealand's regional fleet accounts for about 40 per cent of its domestic emissions, so the airline has been working with European plane maker ATR on hybrid electric aircraft, which could be in use within a decade or so.

Electricity

Most of New Zealand's electricity comes from renewable sources – 83 per cent, the third highest level in the developed world and without government intervention renewables are on track to increase their share to 95 per cent over the next 20 years.

Huntly, owned by Genesis Energy, is the biggest fossil fuel station in NZ. It supplies about 17 per cent of the country's electricity using coal and gas-fired generators. There is also a gas-fired power station in Taranaki and a diesel-fired station north of Napier.

Manufacturing

New Zealand's largest company Fonterra has been under attack for its use of coal, with a third of its factories in the country still using the fossil fuel. Worldwide it emits 2.2 million tonnes of CO2, with about half that coming from its New Zealand plants, largely for drying milk.

It proposes a net zero emissions from fossil fuels by 2050; since 2015 it has reduced manufacturing emissions by 5 per cent.

Competitor Synlait has installed an electricity-powered boiler at its Canterbury plant, at a saving of 13,714 tonnes of CO2 a year, compared to if it used coal. It will use a gas-fired boiler in its new Pokeno, Waikato, factory.

More than 60 schools still burn coal for heating, as do a number of hospitals and prisons.

Professor Emeritus at the University of Canterbury, Dr Andy Buchanan, suggests new building owners should be incentivised to use timber because that locks up carbon.

A typical 200 square metre timber house contains 30 cubic metres of wood, and stores carbon equivalent to 27 tonnes of CO2. He recommends a one-off cash payment to owners of new buildings using timber rather than other materials.