New Zealand’s Conservative government has released its first annual report on its New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ ETS), and the general assessment is that it is working well. In the report, released August 1st, climate minister Nick Smith implied that he was pleased with how smoothly the scheme is progressing in achieving its twin [...]

As the earthquake rescue and recovery comes to an end, Christchurch is shifting its attention to reconstruction. Given the scale of damage wrought by a series of earthquakes, the city is faced with big questions about its future form. Initial estimates suggest that up to half of the inner city will have to be demolished. [...]

The disappointment of Copenhagen, hardly eased by Cancun, has prompted the question: ‘Now what?’ One possible answer lies in The Hartwell Paper: A new direction for climate policy after the crash of 2009, jointly written by a group of academics in February 2010. The recommendations of The Hartwell Paper emerge from the revision of some [...]

Plans for the largest wind farm in the Southern Hemisphere just rose from the dead. At a cost of NZ$2 billion, Project Hayes was put forward by Meridian Energy, the country’s first carbon neutral energy company, a state-owned enterprise that provides renewable electricity in New Zealand. The proposal involved 176 turbines, each 160 metres high, [...]

Article by Guest Contributor: David Hall New Zealanders are not usually known as passionately political. So when tens of thousands of protesters marched through downtown Auckland, as they did on 1st May this year, it was obvious a nerve had been struck. The issue was environmental. The centre-right National Government had proposed opening 7058 hectares [...]

Article by Guest Contributor: David Hall On July 1st this year, New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) began to turn the screw on its greenhouse gas emissions. With forestry liable since 2008, the energy and industrial sectors finally entered the carbon era. Fuel and power companies immediately displaced the cost of greenhouse gas emissions onto [...]