New Zealand should look to become the leading exporter of technology that mitigates greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says.
New Zealand should look to become the leading exporter of technology that mitigates greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says.
Agriculture everywhere would face significant challenges in meeting a dramatic rise in world food demand while cutting greenhouse gas emissions, the OECD said in a survey of the New Zealand economy, published today.
It welcomed the Government's decision to play a leading role in fostering international cooperation in agricultural greenhouse gas mitigation research.
There was a strong case for public assistance for the development of such technologies, given this country's emissions profile, the OECD report said.
It may still be necessary to amend the law to allow experimentation with new genetic strains of livestock and feeds that could enable lower methane emissions from ruminant animals.
In relative terms, New Zealand was a heavy greenhouse gas emitter, second only to Australia among OECD countries in the amount of emissions produced per unit of GDP. It was the 12th highest per capita emitter in the world.
Its emissions profile was different from the OECD average, with agriculture accounting for almost half of total emissions, mostly methane and nitrous oxide. Elsewhere in the OECD, energy and carbon dioxide emanating from fossil fuel-based energy use dominated.
New Zealand also made far greater use than other OECD countries of forest sinks to capture carbon, which offset nearly 40 percent of its agricultural and industrial emissions, making it more like many developing countries in that respect.
Among the particular challenges facing this country was the lack of any cost-effective way to substantially mitigate methane emissions, the OECD report said.
While a technology existed to control nitrous oxide emissions, it may not be economically viable except on very intensive farms, though there was some debate on that matter.
The Emissions Trading System (ETS), which came into effect in 2008, would be this country's main policy tool to deliver on its international greenhouse gas commitments.
It was a solid basis on which to build an efficient, fair and effective carbon pricing scheme, the report said, although noting that transitional measures blunted the carbon price signal.
In the energy sector, emissions were relatively low, compared to elsewhere in the OECD, but rising fast mainly because of growing electricity use and vehicle transport, the report said.
Factors such as low fuel excise taxes, an old car fleet, one of the OECD's highest car ownership rates, under use of road charging and inadequate public transport infrastructure all made transport in this country relatively carbon intensive.
The dispersal of the small population over an area similar to that of countries with much larger populations reduced the potential for economies of scale and made addressing transport emissions complex, the report said.
Electricity generation was already relatively "clean", with about 70 percent produced from non-emitting sources, reducing the potential to cut emissions in future through fuel switching at reasonable cost.
