Voluntary Greenhouse Gas Reporting Feasibility Study
1 Introduction
The Ministry of Agricultural and Forestry (MAF) commissioned URS New Zealand Ltd (URS) and Firecone to complete a feasibility study of voluntary greenhouse gas reporting of agricultural emissions. This report contains the results of that study.
Voluntary greenhouse gas reporting (VGGR) is the voluntary monitoring and reporting of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions at the enterprise (farm) level. Agriculture is responsible for almost 50% of NZ’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (MfE, 2006). At present, although agricultural emissions are estimated annually at the national level, there is no formal system in place for farmers to quantify emissions at the farm level. Emission estimates at the farm level would comprise an essential component of any programme designed to reduce emissions and is a pre-requisite for a number of proposals outlined in MAF’s public discussion document Sustainable Land Management and Climate Change released in November 2006.
The objective of this study is to provide a technical evaluation of different VGGR options open to the government, and for each option, to investigate the cost implications, advantages and disadvantages and any implementation risks involved.
MAF stipulated in their contract that any VGGR option should include:
• a system to report emissions from individual farms, or aggregations of them, to farmers, government and the public
• a registry to receive reports of farms’ emissions
• a system for auditing the reports of on-farm emissions, including options for contracting this activity to third parties
• a system to provide advice to farmers to help them with operating the VGGR system and to enable them to reduce emissions.
This study does not provide a cost benefit assessment of a VGGR system against any stated government policy objective.
The project team completed this study in three phases. The first phase comprised investigation and context setting required to outline possible VGGR options. The results of the first phase are contained in sections 3-6 and describe agricultural sector GHG emissions in NZ, available methods to estimate GHG emissions in NZ, GHG reporting systems that exist in other countries and possible incentives and disincentives that might exist for farmers to participate in a VGGR system.
The next phase comprises the description and design of possible VGGR systems, and the costs and outputs of each system. This assessment is contained in section 6. The final phase comprises high level advice to government if they choose to implement a VGGR system and includes consultation guidance, risk identification and a suggested project plan for implementation. This advice is provided in sections 7-9. Section 10 contains a study conclusion.
To complete this study, URS and Firecone subcontracted the services of AgResearch, the AgriBusiness Group and Fronde Systems Group. AgResearch provided input into sections 2 and 3, the AgriBusiness Group provided input into sections 5 and 7, and Fronde provided IT costing information required for section 6.
Contact for Enquiries
Sustainable Land Management and Climate Change
MAF
Pastoral House
25 The Terrace
PO Box 2526, Wellington
Tel: 0800 CLIMATE (254 628)
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