Cleaner economic growth

Stats NZ reports:

New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions rose 24 percent in the past 25 years, but grew more slowly than the economy in general, Stats NZ said today.

This is overall good news because it means we are producing less greenhouse gas emissions per unit of economic output.

Basically there are two ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. One is to reduce the intensity of emissions per unit of economic output. The other is to reduce economic output.

Far too many of the solutions for greenhouse gas emissions would just result in shrinking our economy (and incomes and jobs). For example reducing the dairy herd by a third would have a huge impact on exports, incomes and jobs.

So the challenge is to reduce the intensity of greenhouse gas emissions in the economy. And let’s look at how that has gone in the last 25 years.

• 1990 – 1000 (start point)
• 1999 – 843

So the intensity decreased 15.7% under the 4th National Government.

• 1999 – 843
• 2008 – 695

A 17.6% reduction in intensity under the 5th Labour Government

• 2008 – 695
• 2015 – 577

A 17.0% reduction intensity in the first seven years of the 5th National Government. It will be interesting once we get 2016 and 2017 data as if the trend continues the overall intensity reduction will be greater than under Labour. The average drop per year under the last Government was 2.4% while Labour was 1.9%.