Decarbonising big business
Big corporates are lining up to prove their carbon credentials, responding to a huge shift in public and political opinion.
The Warehouse has gone carbon neutral by buying carbon credits and planting native trees to ‘‘offset’’ the carbon it emits selling us stuff.
Air NZ has signed up to the Dryland Carbon partnership with Genesis Energy and Z Energy to plant mainly ‘‘exotic’’ trees like radiata pine to offset emissions.
And SkyCity and NZ Post have both set up carbon action funds to research ways of cutting their carbon footprints.
Anthony Beverley, chief executive of Dryland Carbon, came up with the idea in 2011, but it was only in the past 18 months, that the idea was welcomed.
‘‘Since 18 months ago, it was pretty clear New Zealand had a different way of doing things,’’ he said. ‘‘There was a general recognition this is serious, and we really need to hold hands on it.’’
The Government sends out strong messages to corporates, and companies who want to stay in favour in Wellington need to listen.
And there’s a chain reaction. When a business like the Warehouse goes carbon neutral, it sends a message to its suppliers, said David Walsh, chief executive of NZ Post, which is a big supplier of services to the retailer’s growing e-commerce business.
But the change of climate on carbon isn’t just the result of a Labour/Green government, Beverley said.
In 2015, the banning of cheap carbon credits pushed the carbon price up in New Zealand turning it from a minor inconvenience to a big cost. The price of carbon went from the sub-$5 a unit ‘‘no price’’, said Beverley, to about $25.
Suddenly Dryland Carbon was economically viable, and with predictions for the future carbon price in New Zealand being anywhere from $52 to $200, companies now have some significant future risk to manage.
Figures from UMR Research show 2018 was the year in which, for the first time, more New Zealanders were convinced that manmade climate change was backed by scientific consensus than there were people who still thought there was a scientific debate about it.
CALL FOR ACTION
Genesis Energy chief executive Marc England said stakeholders including employees, iwi and investment funds, including the NZ Super advocating corporates.
England said the company had halved its carbon footprint in the past decade but offsetting was part of tackling climate change.
‘‘It’s got to be a bit of everything. You have got to reduce the output, and you have got to increase the absorption.’’
The Potsdam Institute for Climate Change says offsetting global carbon emissions is not a viable option to counteract emissions from fossil fuel burning because the plantations Fund, were all for action from would need to be so large, they would eliminate most natural ecosystems or reduce food production. But within the treeplanting offsetting there are the two competing strategies of planting native trees, used by the Warehouse, and planting exotics.
‘‘Exotics sequester a whole lot of carbon massively more than indigenous forests.’’ But though radiata pine forests are no longer seen as unfriendly to native birds, neither have they the reputation of supporting much biodiversity.
And, Beverley said, government agencies were concerned fertile land would be planted out with forests.
But he said Dryland Carbon was targeting marginal land, so agriculture should not be displaced.
DECARBONISATION FUNDS Walsh said NZ Post had opted not to offset, describing offsetting as a ‘‘soft answer’’.
‘‘We know if we did a carbon offset, it would be $1.5 million a year,’’ he said.
That money was being used to create a decarbonisation fund to research ways NZ Post could cut its emissions. Already, it is investing in testing electric courier vans.
SkyCity, which operates casinos in Auckland, Hamilton, Queenstown and Australia, was doing something similar, charging itself a $25 ‘‘levy’’ for every tonne of carbon it is responsible for, for its decarbonisation fund.
It aims to be carbon neutral in New Zealand by the end of the year.