NZ downgraded in global climate rankings

New Zealand has dropped seven places to 41st in the global Climate Change Performance Index, which ranks countries based on their emissions, deployment of renewable electricity, overall energy use and climate policy.
The announcement of the latest update to the index, which has been running since 2005 and is considered an authoritative evaluation of the climate performance of 63 nations, came at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan on Wednesday. The top three slots in the index were left blank, to reflect that no country is ticking all four boxes evaluated.
“Countries really, at the end of the day, are not doing enough. That is the message of the CCPI,” Janet Milongo, from Climate Action Network International, said at the announcement of the index.
“There is an opportunity – several opportunities, really – for countries to step up and really flip into emergency mode at this point. It is no coincidence that the worst performers in the index are actually the largest fossil fuel producers.”
New Zealand’s drop in the rankings takes it from ‘medium’ to ‘low’ performance, behind countries like the United Kingdom and South Africa, but still ahead of some of the world’s largest fossil fuel producers, like Australia and Saudi Arabia.
On renewable energy, New Zealand outperformed the average, coming in sixth place with ‘high’ performance. But it was dragged down by a ‘very low’ rating on energy use, ranking 49th, and landed just 12th from the bottom on climate policy.
“A new Government was elected in October 2023, and the CCPI country experts note that it has taken significant backwards steps in climate policy. It is unclear how New Zealand will meet its international climate obligations or its 2050 emissions reduction target,” the index reported.
Four fifths of the rating is quantitative, with emissions given a 40 percent weighting and energy use and renewable deployment given a 20 percent weighting each. Experts from each country then qualitatively evaluate the climate policy for the remaining 20 percent of the ranking.
David Tong, the global industry lead for Oil Change International, was also one of the reviewers who evaluated New Zealand’s climate policies for the index. He said the repeal of the oil and gas ban and the Government’s delays to pricing agricultural emissions contributed to its downgrading.
“It’s no surprise that New Zealand has been downgraded in the ratings given that the Government has walked back climate policy. For the Climate Change Performance Index reviewers, the Government’s singular focus on the Emissions Trading Scheme is not seen positively,” he said.
“New Zealand National governments have successively said that they aim not to be a leader but a fast follower, or in the middle of the pack, on climate policy. What we’re seeing in the Climate Change Performance Index this year is the Government falling down backwards, rapidly making its way to the bottom of the pack.”
Newsroom reported last week that the Government will finalise the repeal of the oil and gas ban within a month of the end of the climate summit, even while New Zealand’s diplomats in Baku are pushing for a global phase-out of fossil fuels. Unredacted legal advice released to Newsroom also shows officials believe the move is “likely” to breach New Zealand’s free trade agreements.
Tong said the contrast with New Zealand’s major, environmentally minded trading partners like the United Kingdom and European Union will raise eyebrows overseas. Those nations ranked sixth and 17th, respectively.
“The repeal of the offshore oil and gas ban is likely to be looked at poorly from major trading partners. We’ll almost certainly be ejected from the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance and it will not go unnoticed in Brussels and in London that New Zealand’s Government is proceeding with this repeal despite legal advice that it could be contrary with our country’s free trade agreements with those nations.”
Jan Burck, one of the co-authors of the index report, said New Zealand’s lack of a realistic plan to meet its climate targets was another factor in the downgrade.
“New Zealand’s former government set relatively strong targets, but the experts from New Zealand are criticising the new Government, that all the policies that are needed to implement these good targets are lacking and are not there anymore, especially when it comes to agriculture, which is the main issue in New Zealand,” he told Newsroom.
“So we see a huge difference at the moment between what they plan and what they’re actually doing.”
Greenpeace Aotearoa spokesperson Amanda Larsson said the performance index ranking was a recognition that New Zealand was “quiet-quitting” on climate policy.
“New Zealand can’t rely on its renewable electricity and being a signatory to the Paris Agreement as get out of jail free cards anymore. The world is waking up to the reality that New Zealand is quiet-quitting in the fight to stop the climate crisis by saying they are committed to climate action while simultaneously rolling back virtually every single initiative that would actually reduce emissions,” she said.
“It’s no secret that this Government’s approach to environmental policy is to let the polluters write the rules – and that’s why New Zealand has dropped in the rankings.”
There are now just two days left in the COP29 talks – officially. Almost every UN climate summit goes long and CarbonBrief’s sweepstake suggests most are counting on a late Saturday or early Sunday finish. Still, with the clock ticking, the COP29 presidency issued new marching orders on Wednesday. Ministerial pairs coordinating talks on key issues reported back to a plenary in the morning and will now deliver new negotiating texts by midnight or early Thursday local time.
Parties will have time to form positions on the new texts and coordinate with their negotiating blocs before coming together in a single large plenary to begin hashing out the issues. Ministerial pairs may then be dispatched once again to come back with second drafts, all with a view to wrapping up by Friday at 6pm.
On the key finance goal, there’s been little movement, although developing nations are now talking US$600 billion in public finance rather than the US$1 trillion or more that had been on the table previously. The total goal could still scale up to the trillions when multilateral development banks and private finance are added in. Developed nations still haven’t put a figure on the table, beyond internal discussions at the European Union of US$200 to $300 billion in public money, reported by Politico.
New Zealand’s Climate Minister Simon Watts is co-chairing the Article 6, or carbon trading, negotiations. In the report back to the COP29 presidency on Wednesday, he and co-chair Grace Fu of Singapore outlined progress on a key question as to whether a carbon trading registry would be a holding account for credits or just track transfers between nations.
A week after the High Ambition Coalition issued a statement outlining its goals for COP29, New Zealand has now signed on. The bloc, chaired by the Marshall Islands, has long been a powerful force advocating for emissions reductions at UN summits. It has no formal membership, but New Zealand has regularly aligned with the coalition.
That’s what was odd about New Zealand’s absence from the statement issued at the start of this year’s COP. Particularly since nothing in the statement seemed to conflict with our negotiating position. The statement is vague enough on the most controversial issues, like the inclusion of loss and damage in the global finance goal, that both developing and developed nations can see merit in committing to it.
Given the sheer number of initiatives and pledges released at each COP, it seems likely this one got stuck somewhere in the approval processes at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Well, better late than never.
Coming into Baku nearly two weeks ago, it seemed a solid bet that COP31 in 2026 would be held in Australia, as part of a joint bid with the Pacific Islands. It would be the first time in many years that a COP would be held below the equator. The other contender, Türkiye, seemed to have no backers.
In Baku, Pacific nations have reiterated their backing for Australia’s bid. But Türkiye still hasn’t given in. Diplomats are also reflecting on the contrasting optics of either another COP in an authoritarian country (Türkiye) or another COP in a petrostate (Australia is the world’s second largest coal exporter and fifth largest gas exporter). In the end, one or the other will need to drop their bid, as the summits can only be approved by consensus from the region whose turn it is to host. (If you’re curious what region counts both Türkiye and Australia among its members, it is of course ‘Western Europe and Others’).
At the end of the COP29 presidency’s stocktake on Wednesday, Bolivia’s Diego Balanza made an intervention on behalf of the Like-Minded Developing Countries bloc. He complained that the COP was unbalanced, with too much focus on mitigation (reducing emissions) and not enough on adaptation or finance.
It’s a strange thing to say at what has been dubbed a ‘finance COP’, given the centrality of the new global finance goal to the summit. It’s even stranger when discussions of mitigation have been blocked at nearly every turn, sparking an hour of testy exchanges at the close of week one. Strangest of all? The countries blocking those discussions are the Like-Minded Developing Countries, chief among them Saudi Arabia.