New delays in vehicle electrification prompts a ministerial appeal to agencies across government, Marc Daalder reports
More than a third of government agencies still don't own a single electric or plug-in hybrid car, prompting concern from the minister leading the public sector's decarbonisation effort.
Economic Development Minister Stuart Nash wrote to other government ministers in June, pleading them to get their departments to reduce the size of their fleets and transition to electric vehicles.
"The proportion of EVs in the fleet is currently at 5.21 percent, and this must increase as a matter of urgent priority," he wrote in a letter released to Newsroom under the Official Information Act.
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An emissions-free fleet was promised by Labour and New Zealand First in 2017, with a target date of mid-2025. That pledge was then overtaken by the 2020 declaration that the public sector would go carbon neutral by the middle of the decade, meaning reducing emissions where possible and offsetting the rest.
Progress under the old target was already sluggish, with just 82 out of nearly 16,000 government vehicles being electric in March 2020. While electrification has accelerated since, the fleet still won't be emissions-free in time to meet the original goal.
In fact, Nash told Newsroom, just 41 percent of the government's light fleet will be electric by the end of 2025. That's down from 49 percent estimated early last year by procurement officials but up from 25 percent in agencies' own plans submitted in late 2021. The total number of vehicles in the fleet will also fall by 5 percent, he said.
"There is still some work to do on reducing the number of vehicles in the government fleet. NZGP [procurement] officials have observed that recent increased engagement at the senior level among CNGP [Carbon Neutral Government Programme] agencies, including my letter that you reference in your query, has increased awareness and momentum for fleet electrification," Nash said.
James Shaw, the Climate Change Minister, said last year public sector "inertia" was to blame for the delays.
"I think inertia in the system is one of the greatest forces that we've been fighting against the entire time," he said.
"But, again, I think that for a lot of [agencies], they wouldn't necessarily have had full information available to them. I guess part of the challenge that we've got is to make sure that they actually can see their options. But I wouldn't want to see the 'practicable' phraseology used as an excuse not to do something that they otherwise could."
Three government directives to agencies are meant to aid with the electrification process.
First, agencies must purchase an EV, or else a plug-in hybrid, "unless there are operational requirements or other circumstances that prevent them from doing so". Second, any exemption requires written permission from department chief executives. Last, costed transition plans must be submitted to the procurement team to guide the fleet decarbonisation.
EVs and plug-in hybrids collectively made up 7.16 percent of the fleet in June, more than double the previous year's share. The total fleet size increased by 5.18 percent over the past year. That's despite the number of petrol and diesel vehicles falling. Petrol hybrids, which aren't considered emissions-free, rose by nearly half.
