A Zero Carbon Road Map for Aotearoa’s Buildings

NZGBC fudges road map via emissions offsets and challenges James Shaw for title of NZ greenwashing king

A critique.

p.4

*"The World Green Building Council defines a net zero carbon building as one that is “highly energy efficient with all remaining energy from on-site and/ or off-site renewable sources”. NZGBC has taken this definition one stage further. In the case of new buildings,we think the carbon emitted during construction should also be included in the calculations.""*

This sounds good as although I'm told that it's 50/50 between build and use as far as emissions go this of course would be highly variable. So most of the CO2 emissions are probably in the building phase in NZ as energy use after build is mostly renewable due to the high hydro component. The caveat here though is that hydro's share continues to decrease and the current rather useless Green Party thinks burning stuff "as long as it's not coal" is fine but of course that…