Transport sector at centre of energy-efficiency drive

Jeanette Fitzsimons

The Government is to make a more aggressive attempt to improve New Zealand's energy efficiency, with the transport sector to come under close scrutiny.

In a raft of documents released yesterday across the energy and climate change portfolios, the Government outlined several options it was considering as it tried to fill the vacuum left by the axing of the carbon tax soon after the election.

Among the new options is a more narrow carbon tax, which would focus on large thermal electricity generators instead of car fuels as it previously did.

The transport sector looks set to come in for close scrutiny in coming months, with a maximum age for imported cars being considered, as well as import controls on the least efficient vehicles.

Greens co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons, who is involved in creating a new National Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy, said yesterday that transport was "the most important area to tackle".

According to the documents, the transport sector generated 45 per cent of energy sector emissions of carbon dioxide in 2003, which are also growing strongly at an average rate of around 4 per cent a year.

Ms Fitzsimons said there were more options now for improving motor vehicle efficiency than there were five years ago when the Government's original energy efficiency strategy was written; it has not had the intended impact and it is being replaced.

"In the last five years there's been vehicles come out with more efficient engines ... biofuels look closer to becoming economic," Ms Fitzsimons said. "I think the opportunities are greater now than they were."

The Government is likely to set targets by the end of this year that may require a percentage of fuel being sold to be biofuel. The percentage and year had not been firmed up yet, but Ms Fitzsimons said the early levels probably would "start off quite small".

Manufacturers of many second-hand cars in New Zealand would not guarantee them for a fuel blend of over 3 per cent ethanol. Another difficulty was distribution because "we don't want every service station in the country having to put in a separate tank for biofuels".

The new energy efficiency strategy will look to set five-year targets. Ms Fitzsimons said the lessons learned from the first strategy included "that purely voluntary measures will only take you a small distance" and "there do have to be some mandatory measures".