Big dry predicted to affect lowering of emissions
HIGHER renewable energy use saw New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions fall for the third year in a row in 2011, although a dry southern summer is likely to end the trend.
The latest New Zealand Energy Greenhouse Gas report revealed that emissions dropped by 2 per cent between 2010 and 2011.
The fall was driven by strong generation from New Zealand’s hydro dams, as well as lower demand for electricity caused by disruption because of the Christchurch earthquake.
Between 1990 and 2011 emissions in the energy sector increased by a third, with emissions from electricity generation going up by 50 per cent and transport by 63 per cent.
However, emissions have been steadily falling since the peak in 2008 as the economy went into recession and industrial demand dropped.
Summers
during
that
period had also brought strong rain, filling hydro catchments and allowing electricity to be exported from the South Island to the North, which is otherwise reliant in part on gas or coal-fired electricity generations.
The trend appears likely to end this year, with the catchments to the South Island hydro systems receiving the lowest rainfall in decades.
In the June quarter, emissions from electricity generation virtually doubled on the same period a year ago, to 2418 kilotonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
The rise was because of higher use of coal, with greenhouse emissions from coal more than quadrupling.
Overall in the June quarter, greenhouse emissions from electricity generation were the highest since 2008.
In the first three months of the year, emissions from electricity generation were about 50 per cent higher in than the same period a year ago.
While electricity usually contributes just over a third of that created by transport, and less than that of manufacturing, it is the part of the economy that fluctuates the most, said Brian Moore, an energy analyst at the Business, Innovation and Employment Ministry.