Kiwis are still buying oodles of new gas guzzlers, David Williams writes
Opinion: I like a positive news story, especially when it comes to the environment – I really do.
But it’s hard to reconcile progress on the Government’s clean car discount scheme with the urgency we need to reduce carbon emissions from transport.
Earlier this month, the NZ Herald reported the scheme – which discounts low or no emission cars, using penalties against those buying gas guzzlers – had broken electric vehicle records.
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That is, last month more than 20 percent of all new vehicles were fully battery-electric, while over a quarter of new passenger cars (excluding utes and vans) were fully battery-electric.
The Government, reported the Herald, was “claiming victory”. In November, when EVs hit 62,000, 60 percent higher than at the end of 2021, Transport Minister Michael Wood said: “It’s great to see more and more people contributing to Aotearoa New Zealand’s climate efforts by making the switch to EVs.”
That is great – car-buying behaviour is changing, slowly. But not enough, as the Herald points out: “Only a fraction of the national fleet are fully-electric vehicles.”
NZ vehicle registrations in 2022, and CO2 emissions (g/km)
There’s another point. Ministry of Transport data show there were 176,393 new light vehicles registered last year, and 120,459 used vehicles (new to this country). Of those, 214,284 were petrol or diesel. (Admittedly, diesel car carbon emissions are, on average, lower than those of petrol cars.)
So, while the proportion of new vehicles that are battery-electric and hybrids is growing, there is still a whole lot of new and used non-EV vehicles arriving in the country and adding to the problem.
Pre-pandemic, New Zealand’s gross greenhouse gas emissions were about 82.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. Energy, including transport, was our second biggest contributor, behind agriculture.
Since 1990, our gross emissions has increased by 26 percent, with one of the biggest reasons “fuel use in road transport, due to traffic growth”. Road transport caused 18 percent of the total emission – and almost doubled between 1990 and 2019.
Given light vehicles make up about 91 percent of the national fleet, they make an outsized contribution to one of our worst climate issues.
There’s no point counting emissions “saved” by EVs unless we’re also counting those extra pollutants being pumped into the atmosphere by additional new cars.
In an ideal world, each time a new car is bought the previous one is retired. But we’re car hoarders.
Our vehicle fleet is one of the oldest in the OECD. Compared to other countries, New Zealand has an abnormally high number of vehicles over 15 years old. We also have some of the highest rates of car ownership in the world, at about 889 vehicles per 1000 people in 2021.
The Climate Change Commission recommends the Government reduce reliance on cars, and make it cheaper and easier to walk, cycle or use public transport. There should be rapid adoption of electric vehicles, the commission says.
We’re sleep-walking amidst a crisis, acting like nothing is wrong – and that includes buying huge numbers of new petrol and diesel cars.
The science suggests the uptake isn’t rapid enough.
A report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said carbon pollution must be almost halved by 2030, from 2010 levels, to avoid dangerous temperature increases.
New Zealand’s climate targets, policies and finance are rated “highly insufficient” by Climate Action Tracker, which says they’re not stringent enough to limit warming to 1.5C.
The consequences of a warmer world are clear to see – whether it’s forest fires and hurricanes abroad, or more intense storm events in New Zealand. NASA said last year was the fifth-equal warmest on record. The past nine years have been the warmest.
The cause is also clear.
“The reason for the warming trend is that human activities continue to pump enormous amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and the long-term planetary impacts will also continue,” Gavin Schmidt, director of GISS, NASA’s centre for climate modelling, said in a statement this month.
We’re sleep-walking amidst a crisis, acting like nothing is wrong – and that includes buying huge numbers of new petrol and diesel cars.
Ralph Sims is an emeritus professor of sustainable energy and climate mitigation at Massey University. He warns New Zealand’s emissions will continue to rise, at least in the next few years, because policies to reduce those emissions aren’t making a big enough difference.
The clean car discount is a classic example, he says; measures like this will only make a difference as part of a suite of policies to encourage walking, cycling and public transport use.
Sims says one problem is big, gas-guzzling cars are seen as a status symbol.
“Unless we get some really stringent legislation to stop the promotion of these vehicles, we’re never going to change it around, we’re not going to change people’s behaviour.
“And that’s a major task to do that. I mean, no government will bring such legislation in.”
“If you buy cigarettes it says on the packet smoking could be a health issue, if you buy alcohol you’re told it could harm your health. In some way or other we need to make it very clear if you buy a big car, you’re increasing your carbon footprint and not helping anybody.” – Prof Ralph Sims, Massey University
In December 2021, Sims wrote a comparison of travelling by diesel car, electric car, bus, train and plane – pointing out that people’s travel choices depend on convenience, comfort and cost.
“You’ve got to make it easier for people to use alternatives to the car,” he tells Newsroom.
Education and behavioural change are well and good, he says, but it needs to be driven harder.
The difficulty is not penalising people who are less well-off. Not everyone can charge their electric car from solar panels, like Sims.
Frustrated by the lack of action to reduce emissions, sustainable transport lobby group Movement took the Transport Agency, Waka Kotahi, to the High Court, claiming it has failed to ensure the decisions leading to its three-year national land transport programme led to reduced emissions.
“A safe land transport system in the public interest requires a reduction in emissions from land transport,” Movement’s statement of claim says.
Waka Kotahi denied the claims and opposed the decision adopting the programme be quashed. The Transport Minister joined the judicial review, a hearing for which was held in October.
One of the affidavits to support the claim came from Sims.
He tells Newsroom: “If you buy cigarettes it says on the packet smoking could be a health issue, if you buy alcohol you’re told it could harm your health. In some way or other, we need to make it very clear if you buy a big car, you’re increasing your carbon footprint and not helping anybody.”
