Contact Energy - Emissions

Climate change is a real global challenge that will affect our communities, our economy and our environment. We produce greenhouse gas emissions from our activities, primarily our thermal and geothermal plant. We’re focused on reducing these in line with the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting the global temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius, while also supporting our customers to reduce their emissions.

Our stakeholders and customers have told us that energy resilience is important to them, so we’re committed to maintaining affordable, sustainable and reliable access to energy. We also see commercial opportunities in the transition to a low carbon economy and are open to forging partnerships that enable us to offer low carbon solutions to our customers.
As part of our decarbonisation strategy, we’ve developed a climate change position statement, established science-based emissions reduction targets, and formalised the board’s oversight of climate related matters through the board’s HSE committee.

Climate change position

We know that climate change is a real global challenge that will have significant impacts on our communities, our economy and our environment so we’re committed to taking real steps to address it.
We believe that human activity is accelerating climate change so we are putting our energy where it matters by focusing on reducing our own emissions while supporting our customers and other sectors to reduce theirs.
We recognise that energy resilience is what matters most to our customers so in leading New Zealand to a decarbonised energy system we will maintain affordable, sustainable and reliable access to energy for our customers.
We appreciate that the transition to a low carbon economy is a challenge for everyone and will take considerable effort and time, so we’re in it for the long haul.
We believe that how we do things is just as important, if not more, than what we do so we are committed to open, honest and productive partnerships to provide solutions to climate change.
We know that the transition to a low carbon future will have long term benefits for everyone, including us.

Our emissions

Our greatest emissions are in our Scope 1 emissions from power generation at our thermal and geothermal operations and through fuel use in our vehicles. We monitor our direct emissions and other discharges to air in line with resource consents and reporting requirements under the Emissions Trading Scheme. Accurate monitoring enables us to track progress against targets and ensure transparency in reporting. Since 2018, we have been voluntarily reporting our Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions in line with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol 2004, and we have rebased our Scope 1 emissions to align across the three scopes. We have also applied the operational control consolidation approach, which allows us to focus on those emissions sources that we have control over and have the ability to change.

This year our Scope 1 and 2 emissions were 13 per cent higher than the previous year. This was due to a nationwide dry year, with low lake levels meaning we ran our thermal power stations more. For more detail on our emissions please refer to our GHG Inventory.

FY21 GHG Inventory
FY20 GHG Inventory
FY19 GHG Inventory

Emission Reduction Targets

We have set emission reduction targets through the Science Based Targets initiative to ensure that our targets regarding Climate Change are ambitious and in line with the current science required to minimise global warming to 1.5 degrees. Our current verified targets are:

To reduce our Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2026
To reduce our Scope 3 emissions from use of sold products by 34% by 2026

These verified Science-based targets show us how much and how quickly we need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions in order to be consistent with keeping warming below the most dangerous levels to prevent the worst impacts of climate change related warming.