Call for ‘climate technology roadmap’
The development and uptake of new technologies to reduce carbon emissions could be speeded-up with more government involvement, the country’s peak technology industry association says.
NZTech said in a report released yesterday that a “climate technology roadmap” could encourage more investment in carbon-abating technologies but would need both industry and political support to be a success.
“Ideally, a government agency would administer the drive for a climate technology roadmap, but it should also have oversight from a collaboration of industry, government, Māori and research institutions,” its report said.
New Zealand was not on track to meet its emissions reduction targets, NZTech said.
“Despite making important steps and increasing activity across New Zealand, officials have reported to Cabinet that the country will not meet the first emissions budget,” it said. “The global climate action body Climate Action Tracker has also assessed New Zealand’s climate response as ‘highly insufficient’.”
NZTech’s report was published as the price of carbon credits continued to languish at $52 – well down on their 18-month high of $88.50.
The slump in the price of carbon credits makes it correspondingly cheaper to release carbon emissions into the atmosphere and less economic to investment in abatement measures.
NZTech noted that the Environment Ministry had estimated that, as it stood, the country might need to spend between $8.8 billion and $20.6b on overseas carbon credits to meet the emissions-reduction target it had agreed to reach by 2030.
“Although New Zealand is a world leader in its use of renewable energy, in 2021 New Zealand had 16.9 tonnes of carbon-dioxide per capita – the sixth highest emissions per capita of OECD countries.”
NZTech chief executive Graeme Muller agreed it could be more tempting to talk-up the potential of new technologies to abate emissions than to accept sacrifices had to be made.
But he noted that telecommunications company Spark had estimated that digital technologies had the potential to cut New Zealand’s carbon emissions by 7.2 million tonnes a year by 2030, which would achieve 40% of the country’s targeted reductions.
Spark was counting on developments such as the increased uptake of online services cutting travel, robotics in agriculture reducing waste, and “smart” meters and appliances reducing the current reliance on fossil demand.
Reports could be “blah, blah, blah”, but technology roadmaps had been useful in encouraging innovation and investment in countries such as the UK that had a good recent track record in reducing emissions, Muller said.
The Government spent a lot of money supporting research and development “but what it wasn’t asking is ‘do you want emissions reductions with that?’,” he said.
“A bit more of a co-ordinated, ‘signalling’ approach will help with international investment and private investment.”
NZTech’s study listed a number of possible “quick wins” that the technology industry could help deliver.
These included using anaerobic digestion facilities to turn agricultural and animal waste into biogas, adding more battery storage systems to the power grid and increasing financial support for companies developing low-carbon cement.
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts said in a foreword to the NZTech report that the scale of transformation required to meet the country’s targets meant they could only be achieved by the public and private sectors working hand in hand. fuels to meet peak electricity