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In 2019, New Zealand passed “The Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Act” which included establishing the Climate Change Commission, a Crown entity to provide independent advice to Government to help Aotearoa transition to a climate-resilient and low emissions future. The Climate Change Commission’s first draft advice was released in January 2021 and, amongst other things, highlighted the opportunity to transition away from fossil fuels for domestic space and water heating. Compared to natural gas or LPG the use of wood burners for domestic heating, while a carbon neutral heating option, has the disadvantage of contributing to the deterioration of local air quality. In order to improve winter air quality, Environment Canterbury (ECan) has introduced a pseudo real-life wood burner authorisation test method known as Canterbury Method One (CM1). Appliances passing the CM1 test method qualify as Ultra-low Emission Burners (ULEBs) and are the only wood burning appliances allowed to be installed into houses within clean air zones in Canterbury. This paper provides updated information on the numbers and design trends of ULEBs authorised to date, and comments on how manufacturers have achieved the ULEB performance limits. The ongoing improvement of ULEBs provides the opportunity to transition away from fossil fuels toward a carbon neutral fuel without generating adverse air pollution impacts. This paper provides a summary of the journey to-date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late 1960s, New Zealand and the United States collaborated to establish a southern hemispheric carbon dioxide (CO2) monitoring station on New Zealand's coastal cliffs. The New Zealand CO2 Project, as it came to be known, is an underappreciated landmark in the history of environmental monitoring. The archival record of its early years reveals the extent to which efforts to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations interacted closely with one of the most hotly debated political issues of the mid-twentieth century: urban air pollution. The designation of CO2 as air pollution on a planetary scale had profound legal implications in an era in which clean air legislation increasingly brought air pollution within the scope of governmental regulation, and administrative agencies began to jostle for control of the monitoring enterprise. The precise nature of CO2 as an air pollutant, however, was difficult to pin down. In these initial years of concerted carbon dioxide monitoring, when the lines between climate science and air pollution research were still blurred, CO2 developed its many pollutant identities. The nature of these identities - and the ways in which scientists and science administrators negotiated their boundaries - retain their relevance today, as nations continue to link air pollution and climate legislation in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates seasonal patterns and annual trends of PM10 concentrations in the small town of Mosgiel located in Otago, southern New Zealand. A second aim is to explore the relationship between PM10 concentrations and concomitant meteorological factors. PM10 data were collected intermittently over a seven-year period (1998-2004) using both gravimetric Minovol and Hivol methods. Meteorological data were gathered over the same time period from two sites in the region. Although there has been an increase in annual PM10 concentrations over the period 2001-2004, the small dataset and the high variability precludes drawing firm conclusions. Monthly PM10 levels were at their highest in the winter months of June and July on days with low minimum daily temperatures, low wind speeds and little or no rainfall. the analysis shows that, based on limited data, PM10 exceeded the new national 24-hour PM10 standard of 50µg m-3 to ten times each winter. Given more frequent sampling, it is expected the number of exceedances could be significantly higher, and the Mosgiel area is unlikely to meet the new national standard, which allows only one exceedance of the standard each year. Analysis of meteorological data shows that minimum daily temperature and logarithmically transformed average daily wind-speed and total daily rainfall are all significantly correlated with PM10 concentration, but the correlations are not strong. The study highlights the need for regional authorities to undertake continuous sampling of particulate and more detailed meteorological monitoring close tot the pollution sources in order to better understand the air pollution meteorology of this small town. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism's increasing contribution to climate change, especially through the use of air travel, is now acknowledged. This study seeks to explore tourists' knowledge and awareness of aviation's impact on the climate, their sense of personal responsibility and their reactions to specific climate change policies. A focus group approach — informed by interviews with international tourists leaving New Zealand — was chosen to involve tourists in discussing climate change and travel. In the focus groups, three policy options were discussed: voluntary initiatives, a global air travel charge and a per capita carbon budget. The global air travel tax emerged as a realistic compromise between restricting travel and achieving emissions reduction. When discussing individual responsibility for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, tourists distinguished between their travel and their everyday life, where responsibility for mitigation was perceived to be greater. The value of freedom to travel is firmly established in the minds of many tourists and limiting travel is considered unacceptable by the (hyper) mobile tourists who participated in this research. Only major societal changes to bring about behavioural change seem likely to reduce air travel's contribution to climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transition to hybrid petrol/electric vehicles (HEVs) is one means among many of reducing carbon emissions pursuant to the New Zealand emissions reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol. The potential financial incentive value of an emissions charge was evaluated by comparing purchase and running costs of an HEV with an equivalent petrol-fuelled car. Had a carbon tax of $15/tonne CO2 operated in January 2006, the net fuel efficiency saving on the basis of the emissions charge and the inbuilt fuel efficiency of the HEV amounted to $655.50 annually for an HEV. When compared with a $7000 purchase price differential in favour of petrol-fuelled vehicles, it can be concluded the proposed carbon tax would not have provided a sufficient incentive to bring about any significant change in the distribution of HEVs across the market. Shifting the norm to a higher proportion of fuel-efficient cars will therefore require other incentives and/or policy mechanisms. We explore alternative policy options for bringing about such a shift, including the option of a tradable vehicle emission permit system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Joint Implementation (JI) host country has to make sure that JI projects are additional to avoid extra costs to generate the reductions necessary to cover the deduction of Emission Reduction Units (ERUs) from the country's Kyoto Protocol emissions budget. A tender of ERUs by the government allows to generate additional reductions beyond the ERUs issued if it thoroughly checks project additionality. The government of New Zealand is running a tender for JI projects under the title ‘Projects to Reduce Emissions’ since 2003. In two rounds, 10 million ERUs have been awarded and several projects have already entered into contracts with European buyers. The ratio of ERUs awarded to reductions achieved was 0.8 in the second tender. However it remains to be seen whether the additionality test of this tender is sufficient to exclude clearly non-additional projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]