Governments Proposed Emissions Reduction Plan Insubstantial on Transport

By All Aboard Technical Advisor, Connor Sharp -

It is extremely disappointing, given how important climate action is to New Zealanders, that the Government's Emissions Reduction Plan (ERP2), is a far cry from what is needed to decarbonise transport in Aotearoa. The ERP2 uses a ‘cost-effective net emissions approach’, and so instead of ensuring all sectors do their part to reduce emissions, it only seeks to lower emissions as a whole and offset emissions with tree planting, all the while minimising government involvement and cost. Essentially, it gives the veneer of climate action without enacting the transformative changes required across sectors to genuinely lower emissions.

This is not sufficient, especially for the decarbonisation of transport. The transport sector produces 17% of Aotearoa's overall emissions, and 39% of our CO2 emissions. For Auckland, transport produces over 40% of the city's emissions. This means to meaningfully reduce our climate impact, transport is key.

The good news is we have all the tools and plans to get back on track with decarbonisation of transport. In fact, it is one of the easiest ways to reduce our emissions with a multitude of wider benefits. With the impacts from weather events last year that were supercharged by human-caused warming still echoing today, it’s vital that we head in the right direction with our climate action.

What’s wrong with Transport in the ERP2?

Decarbonisation of transport in the ERP2 is heavily reliant on the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS),  technological changes; particularly through the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) and low-emission fuels, and minor investment in public transport. 

This is a woeful plan for climate action. These key policies are projected to have a minimal impact on net emissions - and that isn’t even taking into consideration wider policy changes undertaken by the Government to spend billions of dollars to build State Highways, and cut all funding to walking and cycling projects.  Additionally, as transport is in the ETS, these reductions are also likely to be subject to the ‘waterbed effect’, where reducing emissions in one place results in increased emissions elsewhere. So it is likely that any reduction in transport will be overcome not only by other transport policies which are not being measured, but other polluting activities in other sectors.

The ERP2 also suffers from the removal of policies and actions by the current government from the previous ERP1 (which covers 2022-2025). These policies: aimed to reduce vehicle kilometres travelled (VKT) through modeshift to walking, cycling, and public transport, subsidised clean vehicles, required the Government policy statement on land transport (GPS) to be consistent with the ERP,  and required new transport investment to take into account emissions.

This means that the recent GPS, as it states in its introduction, did not take into account ERP1, therefore billions of dollars of proposed investment in State Highway and roading projects do not have to consider emissions when determining if they are actually worthwhile to build. 

Already we are seeing the downstream effect of this. One notable example is Auckland’s Regional Land Transport Plan for 2024-34, which ranks transport projects that bid for central government funding and has to take into account the GPS. It did not contain any modelling on its climate impact, and has moved over ten billion dollars of state highway projects up its regional rankings from the draft version.

This means any small reduction in transport emissions under the ERP2 are very likely to be outweighed by other government policies, and we will instead see significant increases in transport emissions.

So what should we be doing instead?

In short, full transformation of our transport system. While that sounds ambitious, it’s not only completely realistic but we actually have a framework to do it through the Transport Emissions Reduction Pathway (TERP), developed by Auckland Council and Auckland Transport. And there's no reason we can’t adapt it to other cities in the country.

The TERP was adopted by Auckland Council in 2022, and sets out the goal to reduce transport emissions in Auckland by 64% by 2030. Auckland’s transport emissions in 2019 were 4.9 Mt CO2-e, and a reduction of 64% would reduce emissions by 3.15 Mt CO2-e. That would be a 24% reduction of the entire country's transport emissions,  just through implementing the TERP in Auckland.

The TERP sets out 11 key levers to use, and it requires using all of them:

1: Supercharge walking and cycling

2: Massively increase public transport patronage

3: Prioritise and resource sustainable transport

4: Reduce travel where possible and appropriate

5: Safe, low-traffic neighbourhoods for people

6: Build up not out

7: Electrify private vehicles

8: Enable new transport devices

9: Low-emissions public transport

10: Efficient freight and services

11: Empower Aucklanders to make sustainable transport choices

It’s as much about a change in mindset and process, as it is about specific projects. And while the ERP2 does have small contributions to levers 3 and 8, it’s not really a meaningful change in the way we do things.

If we did reintroduce policies to encourage reduction in VKT through modeshift to walking, cycling and public transport not only would we reduce our emissions, but we would make our cities healthier and more productive. Decarbonisation also deals with congestion in our cities by prioritising more efficient ways of moving people through public transport and active travelling. If we transition our freight from trucks to rail we not only get more efficient movement of goods, but we reduce the damage to our roads from trucks, so we see less of those pesky potholes. Climate action in transport makes us healthier, more productive, saves us time and money, and makes our economy grow.

We also know inadequate action will cost us. The TERP points to the Climate Commissions modelling showing that it costs us less than 1% of GDP to reach net zero by 2050, while doing nothing costs us 2.3% of GDP.  So significant climate action is actually the low-cost, economically responsible thing to do.

Is this even possible?

Absolutely, to quote the TERP:

“While the challenge is huge, many solutions to rapidly decarbonise the transport sector already exist, can be rolled out quickly, cost less than other mitigation strategies, and help to achieve other wellbeing goals. Cities around the world are transforming their transport networks to be more affordable for more people, more energy efficient and much safer for everyone. It can be done. This document sets a pathway for Auckland to join the world in transforming the way we move around”

We are not alone in the world in seeking a pathway to a better future, and the decarbonisation of transport really is a win-win for all of us. 

We just need to choose to do it.