Buildings Seen as Critical to Emissions Goals

22 September 2009
Media Release

Buildings Seen as Critical to Emissions Goals

The New Zealand Green Building Council says the Emissions Trading Scheme is missing a major opportunity to reduce New Zealand’s emissions and the cost burden for New Zealand from the ETS.

In a discussion paper launched to coincide with World Green Building Day (23 September) New Zealand Green Building Council CEO Jane Henley said the building industry can lead in the development of a low carbon economy and decrease the need for offsetting strategies.

The paper calls for a range of complementary measures to be investigated to kick-start emissions reductions, given that the ETS alone is insufficient to achieve the full carbon reduction potential within a short timeframe.
These measures include:

• ‘White certification schemes’ - incentivising investment in energy efficiency via white certificates that become tradable assets.

• Green depreciation – accelerating depreciation allowances for building investments that involve specific energy efficient fixtures and fittings, or that raise the overall energy performance of the building to a specific standard.

• Other regulatory measures – amending existing legislation such as the Resource Management Act, Building Regulations and the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act to encourage and facilitate reduced emissions from buildings.

Ms Henley said 17% of New Zealand carbon emissions are from the construction and operation of buildings. This is particularly significant given that almost half (48%) of New Zealand’s emissions are from farming and 20% from transport, both of which will be difficult to reduce.

Ms Henley said the built environment is also one of the few sectors where reducing emissions actually saves money rather than costing the taxpayer.
“We can’t afford to ignore the opportunities offered by the built environment to reduce our country’s carbon emissions.”

A 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that there is the potential by 2020 to avoid at least 29% of the projected baseline global GHG emissions through cost effective mitigation measures in the building sector, using existing technologies.

This supports the work of Sir Nicholas Stern in his 2006 report The Economics of Climate Change, where he also identified the large scale of the opportunity that the built environment offers to reduce global emissions.

Opportunities for the built environment to offer deep carbon emissions reductions are unique. Cost abatement curves show that emission reduction opportunities in the built environment are unmatched from a cost perspective.
Figure 2: Indicative abatement costs - developed countries (solid line) and New Zealand (dashed).

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