Business coalition toughens target for cutting emissions

A coalition of companies making up nearly two thirds of New Zealand’s gross emissions has upped its pledge to combat climate change, as it reports taking an equivalent 264,000 cars off the road since it launched one year ago.

The Climate Leaders Coalition — including major business players like Fonterra, Sanford, Air New Zealand, Spark, KiwiRail, The Warehouse Group and Westpac — marked its oneyear anniversary yesterday by releasing a snapshot of its progress.

By signing on to the coalition, the chief executives of each of its 109 members have agreed to measure and report their emissions and work with suppliers to keep levels down.

The founding aim was to help keep future global warming within 2C — the key goal of the Paris Agreement, under which New Zealand has already pledged to slash emissions by 11 per cent below 1990 levels.

Yesterday, the coalition raised its goal by instead committing to a 1.5C target, and aligning its efforts with the ambitions of the Government’s Zero Carbon Bill.

“Every action on climate change counts and collectively our actions can be mighty,” said the coalition member and SkyCity Entertainment Group boss, Graeme Stephens.

So far, 90 per cent of the businesses were measuring their emissions, 71 per cent were publicly reporting them, more than half have set a public emissions reduction target, and 60 per cent were working with suppliers to cut their emissions.

Twenty-four signatories also reported reducing their emissions over the past year by a combined 569,000 tonnes of CO2 — or the equivalent of taking 264,000 cars off the road.

However, 21 members reported emissions trending upwards, which was put down to factors like organisations re-setting their baseline emissions profile, and business growth.

As well as accounting for 60 per cent of New Zealand’s gross emissions, the coalition employed more than 170,000 people, and represented nearly one third of private sector GDP.

Climate Change Minister James Shaw praised the efforts.

“To my knowledge, no other country in the world has a business network for climate action that even comes close to the level of coverage across the economy, or as a portion of national emissions, that the Climate Leaders Coalition has,” Shaw said.

James Young-Drew, of youth-led climate action group Generation Zero, said it was heartening to see many of New Zealand’s biggest emitters recognise the importance of limiting global warming to no more than 1.5C.

“But making pledges is not . . . cutting carbon pollution,” he said.

The coalition’s first anniversary comes as coalition member Meridian Energy released New Zealand’s first corporate report disclosing risks to its business resulting from climate change.

“Globally, markets and investors have woken up to climate risk,” Meridian chief financial officer Mike Roan said.

“There’s a growing movement to reconsider investments in companies . . . who are heavily exposed, whether that’s from sea level changes, industry disruption . . . new technology or public policies and legislation.”