Climate change legislation
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The Government has set climate change targets and developed policies to reduce New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to a changing climate. These policies include specific initiatives to tackle agricultural emissions.
New Zealand’s climate change legislation
New Zealand has several emissions reduction targets. These are an important part of meeting our international climate change obligations and are set out in legislation. The targets require us to achieve:
- Net zero emissions of all greenhouse gases except biogenic methane by 2050.
- For biogenic methane (from agriculture and waste):
- 0 percent reduction below 2017 emissions by 2030
- 24-47 percent reduction below 2017 emissions by 2050
Net zero means balancing the amount of greenhouse gases emitted with the same amount removed from the atmosphere. Removals can be achieved through a combination of emissions reductions and emissions removals, e.g. carbon sequestration from planting trees.
New Zealand’s targets take a ‘split gas’ approach, which recognises that biogenic methane does not need to reduce to net zero like other greenhouse gases. This is because biogenic methane behaves differently in the atmosphere and has a different warming impact.
To stay on track to meeting the 2050 targets, the Government has adopted a series of five-yearly emissions ‘budgets’ that set the amount that can be emitted over that period. The Government also maintains an emissions reduction plan, with details on the actions that will be taken to meet each emissions budget. Read more on the Ministry for the Environment website.
The Government has established a Climate Change Commission that provides independent advice and monitors progress towards New Zealand’s climate change goals.
DairyNZ engages across these government processes to ensure that the resulting legislation and policies are fair and practical for dairy farmers. For more information, see our Advocacy page.
Climate targets
In 2025, the Government must make two significant climate policy decisions that will impact the agriculture sector, which now accounts for more than half of New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions.
The Government must decide:
- Whether to change New Zealand’s 2050 climate targets, based on advice received in December 2024; and
- What New Zealand’s next international climate commitment under the Paris Agreement will be, covering the period 2031-2035.
Regarding the 2050 target, the Government is considering advice in two major reports:
- Independent panel set up to review the 2050 methane target for consistency with ‘no additional warming’ from 2017: this report presented three target scenarios, which range from 14% to 24% reductions of methane by 2050 (the bottom of the current 24-47% range). These findings are consistent with the Oxford report that DairyNZ commissioned jointly with Federated Farmers and Beef + Lamb New Zealand in 2022/23.
- Climate Change Commission 5-yearly review of the 2050 targets: this recommended a target range of 35-47% for methane and ‘net negative’ for long-lived gases rather than ‘net zero’. Net negative is where more emissions must be removed from the atmosphere than are emitted. The Commission argues that this increase in ambition is necessary for keeping the world on track to achieve the 1.5° goal set out in the Paris Agreement.
The Government must now digest these reports and decide what to do. DairyNZ believes that this decision should be made before any decision on New Zealand’s next international commitment. Having certainty of the 2050 target provides an important direction of travel for New Zealand’s emissions and means future international targets are science-based and grounded in reality. (Note: New Zealand’s current Paris Agreement commitment is already higher than can be achieved via domestic emission reductions and will require purchasing offshore mitigation, which Treasury has estimated could cost upwards of $3 billion dollars.
DairyNZ has been actively advocating for farmers throughout these processes. More information can be found on our Advocacy climate change page.
Addressing agricultural emissions
The Government has introduced legislation to keep agriculture out of the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme. It is committed instead to implementing a fair and sustainable pricing system for on-farm emissions by 2030. This was reconfirmed in December 2024 in the Government’s Emissions Reduction Plan for the period 2026-2030.
The Government has established a Pastoral Sector Group to help address methane. DairyNZ is participating, along with Beef + Lamb New Zealand, DCANZ, Federated Farmers, Deer Industry New Zealand and the Meat Industry Association.
It has also developed a standardised methodology for estimating on-farm emissions and will be making this available for use in existing greenhouse gas calculators. New mitigation technologies will be incorporated in the calculations as they emerge.
The Government is also continuing to invest in accelerating the development of new technologies to reduce emissions, including via AgriZero and the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre.
We will continue to update farmers once further details of these various Government processes are available. In the meantime, we encourage farmers to understand why there is a heightened focus on farm emissions, where they come from on a farm, and how to manage them. You might also be interested in finding out more about the greenhouse gas research that DairyNZ is undertaking.
Dairy companies are working actively on these issues too and should be able to provide information on your farm’s emissions numbers, and actions farmers can consider that will help improve efficiency.