Luxon ’s Three Years of War on the Climate 2023-2026 – updated timeline

When the Luxon-led coalition took office nearly three years ago, its war on climate policy started within days. In the next three years the government made a bewildering number of changes with the effect of increasing climate pollution. Greenpeace Aotearoa Executive Director Russel Norman has undertaken the gargantuan task of tracking them all.

It has been nearly three years since the formation of the Christopher Luxon led Government, a coalition between the National, Act and NZ First parties.

It has been three years of a veritable war on the climate, as part of a broader war on nature. New Zealand and the world is facing a climate crisis and a biodiversity crisis, and, as will be demonstrated comprehensively below, this Government has been systematically making it worse.

There have been so many anti-environment initiatives, across so many government agencies, through so many law and regulation changes, across a raft of budgets, it is exhausting to keep track of them all. 

The aim of this article is to create a comprehensive timeline of the climate-related policy changes, to be a witness, to honestly see what we can see, as the starting point to do something about it. 

I’ve gone through every week of the last nearly three years of the Luxon Government to pull out their climate policies and laid them out below. These policies are part of the longer list of the War on Nature that I’ve covered elsewhere. I’m afraid this is really more of a reference document than an easy-to-read narrative, and it is unpleasant reading at the best of times. So here goes.

The War on Climate, week by week

Voting in the New Zealand general election finished on October 14, 2023 and the Luxon Coalition Government was sworn in on November 27, 2023.

On December 3, 2023, six days later, they announced they were cancelling the New Zealand Battery Project. The Battery Project was designed to provide large-scale long-term storage to give security to the electricity network. We need this security because fossil gas has been declining for the last 20 years, the grid is moving to close to 100% renewable electricity, and we are electrifying transport and industrial processes. The Battery would have stored around 5TWh (5,000,000 MWh) of electricity in a pumped hydro scheme to cover the risk of a dry winter. This is about 1000 times the storage in the world’s largest lithium battery, or about 25,000 times Meridian’s largest lithium battery in New Zealand currently.

On December 6th, 2023 the first Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction under the new Government failed to attract a single bid. National promoted the ETS as its main tool to cut climate pollution, and was relying on raising $900m from ETS auctions to fund tax cuts. 

On December 11th 2023 Cabinet abolished the $650m Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry fund, as part of the mini budget. GIDI was used to support around 80 different industrial projects, including large ones at NZ Steel and Fonterra, to cut emissions in industrial processes by reducing fossil fuel use. Officials estimated that removing this fund would result in ten million tonnes of extra emissions by 2050. Removing the Fund also increased the risk from declining gas supplies and in 2026 the Government would be forced to backtrack and reintroduce some support to help businesses get off fossil gas. 

The oil and gas lobby group celebrated the end of the GIDI fund. Luxon said he didn’t want to subsidise business to cut emissions, however as we found out in the 2025 Budget, he was happy to subsidise oil and gas companies to increase emissions. 

On December 13, 2023 Nicola Willis, the Finance Minister, cancelled the new interisland ferries, which were due for delivery in 2025. The ferries were not only more carbon efficient than the old ones but underpinned the future of rail freight across the country, which is the most carbon-efficient form of freight. The cost of the cancellation was a staggering loss of $671m. The Government has since negotiated for replacement ferries due to be delivered in 2029 with cost unknown. 

Government Ministers met with agribusiness lobby group Dairy NZ somewhere between December 11 and 13 2023. Dairy NZ’s demands for gutting freshwater protections and climate policy fell on fertile ground as we shall see.

On December 14 2023, to the joy of agribusiness, the Luxon Government announced the beginning of the process to remove the clean water rules –  the National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management 2020, a regulation under the Resource Management Act that was one of the most important policies to cut climate and water pollution. Without the clean water rules (and/or a price on dairy emissions) dairy herds are growing again resulting in more climate and freshwater pollution. Dairy is the country’s most climate polluting industry and Fonterra is by far the single biggest climate polluting company. Agribusiness opposed the clean water rules and, with the former head of Federated Farmers, Andrew Hoggard as Associate Agriculture Minister, they were well placed to remove them.

Transport is the country’s second biggest source of greenhouse emissions and measures to cut transport emissions were next on the chopping block.

On December 17 2023, they killed off Wellington’s low emissions transport plan and moved to replace it with an alternate plan with higher emissions and car dependency.

On December 31, 2023 the Gas Transition Plan was due for publication but it didn’t appear. The Plan was meant to lay out a pathway to reduce use and dependence on fossil gas. It was abandoned by the new Government as unnecessary, as they claimed that the gas shortage was a result of the 2018 ban on new oil and gas exploration permits and hence could be fixed by restarting the issue of new permits. This was in spite of the evidence that it takes at least a decade to bring on new gas fields after issuing an exploration permit, and that there were no new major gas discoveries for 20 years regardless. The Gas Transition Plan was formally cancelled in March 2025.

The Luxon Government’s decisions to end the NZ Battery Project, close GIDI, stop work on the Gas Transition Plan, and (as we will see later) fast track seabed mining thereby blocking offshore wind generation, left New Zealand dangerously exposed to an energy shock. Reality was about to impose itself on the Government’s ideology.

2024

They began 2024 by killing off the clean car discount on January 1st, resulting in a collapse of sales of low emission vehicles. 

On January 14 2024 they cancelled the project to build light rail in Auckland.

March 4th 2024 they announced the draft government policy statement on land transport, which slashed spending on cycling and walking and increased funding to motorways. These decisions will increase emissions and hence it was no coincidence that they removed climate change as a consideration in transport funding decisions.

Also on March 4 2026, Simeon Brown as Energy Minister formally cancelled the Gas Transition Plan.

On March 6th 2024 they cancelled the Auckland regional fuel tax which was funding the expansion of the Eastern Busway, which then had to be cancelled.

On March 7 2024, former tobacco lobbyist and current Minister for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop, rejected officials’ advice to include ‘sustainable management’ in the purposes clause of the fast track law. The absence of environmental guardrails in the purposes clause of the bill meant the fast track law could, and would, be used for projects causing immense environmental harm and climate pollution, such as new coal mines and irrigation expansion.

March 14 2024 saw Andrew Hoggard, former Federated Farmers president and current Associate Minister of Agriculture, announce that the Government suspended the requirement for councils to identify Significant Natural Areas so they could be protected. These remnant areas of native vegetation are an important reservoir of carbon and biodiversity. As the Environmental Defence Society pointed out, the law required councils to continue with the SNA work and Hoggard was acting like Muldoon in illegally overriding rule of law.

On March 20, 2024 Andrew Hoggard hosted a private dinner for the Dairy NZ board in the Beehive.

March 21st 2024 saw an announcement about plans for higher speeds on roads, which not only increases fuel consumption and carbon emissions, but by making it more dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians will reduce cycling and walking, further increasing emissions (and deaths and injuries).

Fresh from removing support for electric vehicles, on March 28 2024 they announced moves to subsidise the most inefficient fossil fuelled vehicles and punish electric vehicles, with the changes to the petrol tax and road user charge regime. Academics found that this would increase emissions.

Sometime in March 2024, officials prepared a secret briefing on the Paris climate target. They told the Government that there was a risk that, if New Zealand did not meet its emissions targets, then it would undermine global efforts to cut emissions as it would give an excuse for bigger polluters to do less. The briefing was accidentally released by officials who then asked the media to hand it back – they refused. The Government has still failed to release a credible plan on how it will meet its Paris target. 

April 6th 2024 saw them announce a hand-picked review of the country’s methane reduction targets, based on the ‘no additional warming’ metric being promoted by the global and domestic livestock industry. This metric is at odds with the metric used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and opposed by the Climate Commission and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. Federated Farmers, the lobby group for agribusiness, applauded, and the review was chaired by a former director of Fonterra. Methane has so far contributed 30% to global heating. 

But April 9th 2024 saw new money to subsidise agribusiness research into magic methane reduction technology- the same research that has failed for two decades to produce any meaningful results. Fonterra’s Annual Report had to acknowledge that these novel technologies may never emerge. The real purpose of the research is to maintain the fantasy that New Zealand can cut emissions without reducing dairy cow numbers. Meanwhile the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research had funding cuts.

April 18 2024, Ministry officials told Resource Minister Shane Jones that his proposal to reduce the liability of oil companies for decommissioning end-of-life oil fields, would mean that New Zealand had weaker liability laws for oil companies than other countries. But he ignored the officials’ advice and carried on.

The Luxon Government rounded out the month on 30 April 2024 by abolishing financial support for lower public transport fares for young people.

Budget Day 2024 was on May 30. MfE officials who normally vet the climate impacts of the budget were kept out of the loop but Treasury did some rough calculations to show the Budget would increase emissions by about 2.8 million tonnes. Government cut about $2.4billion out of programmes designed to cut emissions.

There were many environment cuts including:

• Environment Ministry baseline was cut by $617m over 4 years or 21%;
• $900m remaining unspent in the Climate Emergency Response Fund was returned to general coffers;
• Climate Commission faced a budget cut of $85m over four years;
• MfE cut $10m from evidence data science and analysis;
• 3D Coastal Mapping was cut from 85% of the coastline to 40%, saving $9m
• MPI programme for research into planting native forests at scale, saving $50m;
• And they abolished the Environmental Legal Assistance Fund in the Budget. The $600,000 fund was small but was used by community groups and environmental NGOs to take important environmental legal cases. 
• The Community Environment Fund was cut, which supported many small environment community groups.
• The Minister announced that the Waste Levy could now be used for many other purposes than reducing waste, resulting in an effective cut of $230m in Ministry for the Environment funding.

They increased funding to the Ministry for the Environment by $92m to cover the cost of the fast track legislation and the amendments to the RMA – that is, we are paying an extra $92m for officials to work on measures to increase pollution.

On June 9th 2024 Shane Jones announced that the Government will amend the Crown Minerals Act to overturn the ban on new offshore oil and gas exploration permits. They aimed to change the purposes of the Act to promote oil and gas exploration. And they aimed to reduce the liability for oil companies cleaning up their mess at the end of the life of oil and gas fields – he said that this will align with international best practice, even after officials told him the opposite. 

And then we get to June 11th 2024 and agribusiness biological emissions, half of all New Zealand’s emissions. Under lobbying from agribusiness, the government announced that it will change the law so that agriculture and fertiliser companies will not face a price on emissions in 2025. This means there will be no financial incentive to cut emissions, unlike other sectors of the economy. Treasury and MfE said the government’s approach would not work in cutting emissions (surprise). And it went in the face of the Climate Commission, which supported pricing agricultural emissions as an essential tool to cut emissions. Fonterra’s claim that New Zealand is a low emissions dairy producer was debunked by their own reports, and Nestle remained skeptical of New Zealand’s claim to be a low emission producer of dairy. The Government also removed the reporting requirements on large meat and dairy processors so they don’t even need to disclose their pollution.

And with an audible sigh of relief from agribusiness, the government disestablished He Waka Eke Noa on June 11 2024. He Waka Eke Noa was the joint industry-government process established by the Ardern Government ostensibly to develop a pricing mechanism for agricultural emissions. Of course, everyone knew that in fact, He Waka Eke Noa was agreed to by agribusiness simply to delay emissions pricing until after the election. Agribusiness fought against climate action, delayed its implementation while pretending to seek consensus on the details, and then celebrated its demise under a new Government.

On June 19th 2024, the ETS auction failed to attract any bids. The fossil fuel industry and the Government claimed that the ETS was the key mechanism to drive emissions reductions. But the repeated failure of ETS auctions to attract a single bid would suggest otherwise.

Then, on July 9th 2024, the Government announced its carbon capture and storage (CCS) policy framework. CCS is a failed technology promoted by the oil and gas industry as an alternative to actually cutting fossil fuel use. Officials’ advice was that the CCS strategy would actually increase emissions, because it would reduce incentives to cut them. As it turned out, the main CCS project, storage of carbon dioxide in empty gas and oil reservoirs off Taranaki, was not cost-effective and is now stalled (see later). .

They followed this up on July 9 2024 announcing they were weakening carbon efficiency standards (Clean Car Standard) for imported cars (like Trump), which will increase emissions by about two million tonnes. The Transport Minister at the time, Simeon Brown, directed officials to consult only with motor vehicle lobby groups that wanted to weaken the standard, and to not consult with low-emissions vehicle sellers, which resulted in misleading information in the cabinet paper. When Ministry for the Environment officials saw the misleading information, they tried to add corrections to the Cabinet paper, but they were told they couldn’t because it had already been lodged with the Cabinet Office. It transpired that it had been lodged early by the Minister at the request of the motor vehicle lobby.

On July 10 2024, the Climate Minister Simon Watts announced the Government’s five-point climate plan in a half page press release. While there wasn’t much to it, he promised it would be fleshed out in the Emissions Reduction Plan 2026-30. 

And as promised, a week later on July 17 2024, the Government published its draft Emissions Reduction Plan. However, the Plan was not serious as it was premised on magic – magic technology to cut methane emissions and magic Carbon Capture and Storage. Neither of which has any likelihood of appearing in the real world after 20plus years of government funded research. It made it seem like New Zealand is doing something about climate change. Still, the Plan showed New Zealand missing its targets in spite of a biblical commitment to planting pine trees.

They cut the funding to climate science on July 23 2024 (like Trump) with the scientists being snapped up by Germany. 

After vigorous lobbying by agribusiness, on September 3rd 2024, the Government announced it was ‘pausing’ the rollout of freshwater farm plans designed to restrict water pollution. Which means more water pollution, more cows, more climate pollution.

It followed this up on September 4 2024 with the announcement of the second RMA Amendment Bill. This aimed to weaken the National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management, weaken drinking water standards, weaken protection for indigenous biodiversity to allow more quarrying and mining, remove local councils ability to set higher standards on forestry slash, stopping the rollout of freshwater farm plans until they were aligned to industry demands. More climate and water pollution. 

The forestry rules had been strengthened after Cyclone Gabrielle, where forestry slash caused widespread damage to bridges, houses, fences and other infrastructure. The strengthened rules gave councils the ability to set higher standards for commercial forestry to control slash. At the request of commercial forestry companies the Luxon Government was now proposing to roll back these stronger rules so communities would face the same issues again in the future.

The September 4 2024 ETS auction failed to attract a single bid.

On September 11 2024 the carbon-neutral public service program was put on the chopping block. In November 2025 the Government announced that the target to make the public sector carbon neutral would be moved out from 2025 to 2050, comfortably beyond the term of any current ministers

The Government also pushed an amendment to the Companies Act to remove the references to Directors’ ability to consider environment, social and governance issues when making decisions.

September 28 2024 saw the signing off of the rule requiring councils to implement higher speeds, around schools and other locations that they had previously restricted speeds. Councils told the Government it would cost them a lot of money to change all the signage, which would ultimately end up on rates, and more people would be killed and injured. Auckland Council alone faced a bill of $7m to $21m to change signage which ratepayers would be forced to pay. But the Government ignored them.

The start of October 2024 saw the leak of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade advice that the decision to restart oil and gas exploration was likely to breach the free trade agreements with the EU and UK. This part of the MFAT advice was inadvertently included in the physical briefing paper, even though it was redacted online. They tried and failed to hide their climate malfeasance.

On October 6th 2024, the Government was forced to release the list of 149 projects it planned to include in the fast track bill for automatic entry to the fast track process, after the Ombudsman intervened. It included coal mines, seabed mining, incinerators, and irrigation projects, which will increase emissions and biodiversity destruction. The list was released after the select committee process so that the public could not submit on the individual projects. It emerged that companies and individuals associated with these 149 fast track projects had given $500,000 to the ruling parties as election donations. 

The Government crowed about the handful of renewable energy projects in the list, without mentioning that the Ardern Government’s COVID 19 RMA fast track law, which maintained environmental guardrails, also included a string of renewable energy projects. Ten of these renewable energy projects were approved,  a couple are still being considered and a couple were declined. Declining some projects happens when there are environmental rules still in place. There were no coal mines or dairy expansion projects in the earlier list because of their environmentally destructive impact.

Then on October 11th 2024, the Government removed the renewable preference and renewable energy targets from the Government Policy Statement on electricity – Simeon Brown said he is “fuel agnostic” ie he doesn’t care if energy sources cook the climate or not. 

The first RMA Amendment Bill passed on October 23, 2024 (Resource Management (Freshwater and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2024). This Act did a number of things to remove protections for nature to facilitate more cows and more climate and water pollution:

• Panels making resource consent decisions on water allocation could no longer give highest priority to ecosystem health and human health, ahead of commercial interests. The existing hierarchy – ecosystem health, then human health, then commercial – was known as Te Mana o te Wai and sat within the National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management (NPSFW). Henceforth, commercial water users have the same priority as other uses such as ecological or human drinking water. 
• Overturned the rules controlling intensive winter grazing (mud farming) in the National Environmental Standards for Freshwater (NESF), to return to the previous situation where cows in mud was normal in Southland and Otago;
• Made consenting for coal mining easier;
• Suspended the requirement for councils to identify significant natural areas;
• Allowed councils to approve water pollution discharge consents that cause ‘significant adverse effects on aquatic life’ so long as the water was already pretty polluted ( ie it  overturned the court decision on section 107 of the RMA);
• Changed the rules excluding stock from rivers and wetlands to allow more stock access; 
• Paused the rollout of freshwater farm plans while government reworked them along the lines demanded by Federated Farmers and Dairy NZ; 
• Retrospectively blocked the notification of regional council freshwater plans and policy statements developed under the existing National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management 2020;
• Changed the process for developing RMA national policy statements to remove the independent Board of Inquiry, and the Minister took over the whole process.

It was a wishlist from agribusiness and other industry lobby groups. This was no surprise given that the Associate Agriculture Minister Andrew Hoggard is the former president of Federated Farmers, a lobby group which vociferously opposed measures to clean up water pollution.

On October 25 2024, as a result of the Government’s fast tracking of seabed mining, the offshore wind developer, Bluefloat, pulled out of New Zealand. Offshore Taranaki is a great place for cheap renewable baseload wind power, but not if seabed miners are digging up the ocean floor, destabilising turbine foundations and electric cables. Bluefloat did not donate cash to the governing parties (unlike the seabed mining shareholders).

Regulations for low emissions buildings were chopped on November 6 2024, to be replaced by a voluntary approach, in spite of the building industry’s record with lax regulation leading to the leaky houses catastrophe.

Company carbon disclosure was delayed for another year by the External Reporting Board on November 14 2024. 

More coal mining was one of Luxon Government priorities, in spite of the climate and biodiversity impacts, and they were fast tracking new mines. On December 2 2024 we learnt that the annual cost to the government of treating the acid mine leakage at a single historic coal mine, Stockton, is greater than the entire annual royalties paid by the national coal industry. Coal only survives on taxpayer subsidies.

December 4 2024 saw the publication of the report into what methane targets would be like if New Zealand adopted the livestock industry’s preferred way of measuring methane warming, as opposed to using the IPCC science. In doing its work the review group’s complete list of consultations was with two groups: a Groundswell-aligned climate denier group and one other commercial entity. Predictably, the outcome was to suggest weaker methane targets!

The ETS auction on December 4 2024 failed to clear, but 22% of the carbon credits sold and the Government put out a self-congratulatory release. It was to be a short-lived victory as the March and September auctions attracted zero bids.

On December 5th 2024, one Government minister said they won’t be buying offshore carbon credits to meet our Paris commitments, while another said they might.

On December 6th 2024, the Government really pushed the boat out when they appointed fossil fuel lobbyist John Carnegie to the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority. EECA was set up by Green Party Co-Leader Jeanette Fitzsimons to reduce fossil fuel use. Carnegie previously opposed EECA grants that would reduce fossil fuel usage.

On December 11 2024, the Government formally released its decisions to amend the First Emissions Reduction Plan (2022-25) some of which were already announced. The amendments abandoned 41 actions in the original Plan including:

• Assessing how the ETS could support indigenous biodiversity;
• Support for regions managing the energy transition;
• The Climate Emergency Response Fund;
• Develop a Circular Economy framework;
• Requirement for transport decisions to demonstrate emission reductions
• Reducing vehicle kilometers travelled
• Support uptake of e bikes
• Support for energy efficient capital investments (including heating/cooling)
• Gas transition plan
• Ban on new fossil electricity generation
• Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry
• MPI information for farmers to cut emissions
• Agricultural emissions pricing mechanism
• And more.

This was Simon Watt’s five point climate plan in action.

On December 11 2024 the Government also released its final Second Emissions Reduction Plan 2026-2030, which still relied on magic methane inhibitors to cut agricultural emissions, magic carbon capture and storage to capture energy emissions, and lots of pine trees on private and public land. Fossil gas and coal remained a key component of the projected future energy system. Fully a third of projected emissions ‘reductions’ were from carbon capture and storage. Pricing of agricultural emissions by 2030 was the cornerstone of the plan to cut agribusiness pollution. As would become clear soon enough, this was a work of fiction as the carbon capture and storage proved not feasible and in October 2025 the Government itself permanently ruled out pricing agriculture emissions.

The documents around the ERP acknowledged that ‘New Zealand is substantially off track to meet its [Paris Agreement] target”, (p.22) and that was before the Government ended 41 different initiatives to cut emissions .

On December 17, 2024 the Fast Track law passed its third reading. The law allowed for fast track approval of 149 projects including coal mines, toxic incinerators, seabed mining and irrigation projects which would all result in more climate pollution and biodiversity destruction. The law had no environmental sustainability clause in its purposes. Future access to the fast track process was controlled by Chris Bishop, who is also the National Party Campaign Committee Chair. Over $500,000 had already been channeled in 2022 and 2023 to the ruling coalition parties from individuals or corporations with connections to the 149 fast tracked projects listed in the Act. More cash flowed in 2024 from interested corporations to ministers’ parties.

2025

January 30 2025 brought the Government’s announcement of a new Paris Agreement climate target, which was pretty much the same as the old one and still with no plan for how to meet the target without massive purchases of offshore carbon credits. It wasn’t a serious commitment to global climate efforts.

They do however take coal mining seriously which is why on January 31 2025 they included it in the list of ‘critical’ minerals that it is prioritising for extraction (even though it isn’t technically a mineral, but I’m nitpicking). Vanadium is on the list too, which is what they are hoping to mine off the seafloor off Taranaki. 

But the climate was serious for the insurance companies. In February it was revealed they were suing councils over inadequate flood protection schemes, which had failed to protect property from climate-amplified extreme weather events. Councils are asking central government for help with the burden of more flooding. Good luck with that.

But the Government is keen to help reduce a different kind of climate burden – the ‘burden’ of reporting on carbon emissions. As they revealed on February 11 2025, with a proposal to reduce by half the number of companies that must disclose their emissions.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment released his estimate of central government 2024/25 environmental expenditure on February 13, 2025. Spending on responding to climate change had increased by $670m compared to the previous year, as the Government was still funding the response to the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods and Cyclone Gabrielle. Spending on other areas, such as cutting climate emissions and protecting biodiversity, had declined by about the same amount. It was a warning of the fiscal challenge of climate denialism.

The insurance industry waved another warning flag on February 14, 2025 when it issued its report on the insurance cost of the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods and Cyclone Gabrielle. There were 118,000 claims costing $3.8billion. They called for ‘avoiding building in dumb places’, while the Government was fast tracking new housing on a floodplain, for one of their donors.

February 21 2025 brought more government announcements on Carbon Capture and Storage as they sought to find ways to appear to meet their Paris commitments without cutting emissions. 

February 26 2025 found the Climate Minister telling Federated Farmers that there was no legal obligation to meet the Paris targets, and no liability.

March 14 2025 brought a second offshore wind group, Sumitomo, pulling out of New Zealand because of the Government fast tracking seabed mining in the same location – south Taranaki.

March 19 2025 found us at another ETS auction, with not a single bid. Oddly there was no government press release this time.

Part of the reason for the tepid interest in carbon credits was revealed by David Seymour when he said on the same day that the only reason the Government was staying in the Paris agreement was fear of trade retaliation, and they are weighing up the costs versus benefits of leaving it (like Trump). This does not give the carbon market a lot of certainty.

Treasury also didn’t believe the Government was serious about meeting its Paris target. Treasury had not listed the cost of buying offshore carbon credits to meet New Zealand Paris target as a liability in the government accounts. As Treasury said in February 2024 the “Government has not indicated a responsibility to other parties to achieve [the Paris target] by a sufficiently specific statement.”

The ETS auction may also have been undermined by the government decision revealed on March 26 2025 to double the subsidies to Rio Tinto – free ETS carbon credits of $75m per year to the global mining giant. The Climate Minister Simon Watts rejected calls to review free allocations, even when they were backed by the Climate Commission. And even when Watts said he might review some free allocations worth $70m a year that were no longer needed, he was stymied by the inability of the Climate Commission to provide the necessary advice, because Watts had cut its budget. These free credits are still being issued to companies that do not need them – free money.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment released his forestry report on April 9 2025. His number one recommendation was to stop the planting of unlimited amounts of pine trees to offset emissions from burning fossil fuels. The Government ignored his recommendations on ETS reform and doubled down on fossil fuels, as we shall see later in 2025.

On April 21 2025, at an international meeting, the NZ Government abstained on putting a price on international maritime climate pollution as part of global efforts to cut shipping emissions. At this point we might count ourselves lucky they didn’t vote against it.

Finally, on May 7 2025, after 310 days of a vacant Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor role, the Prime Minister nominated John Roche to the role, a dairy industry insider. Roche previously had a leadership role at the industry lobby group Dairy NZ, which lobbies against measures to cut agribusiness climate and freshwater pollution. 

The majority of members of the government science advisory panel also had dairy and agribusiness backgrounds. But, to be fair, one of the panel members worked for an energy company, Genesis, which runs Huntly coal power station.

On May 19 2025 it became clear that the Kapuni Carbon Capture and Storage project was not feasible. This one project was responsible for one-third of all projected emission reductions in the Government’s Emission Reductions Plan. CCS is a fraud in plain sight and its failure means the Government’s Emissions Reduction Novella has a new hole.

Budget day on 22 May 2025 brought new attacks in the War on Climate.

They allocated $200m in the budget to co-invest in new oil and gas exploration and have signalled that it may be more. This is a straight subsidy to increase climate pollution. This was alongside an unlimited and uncapped 20% tax write-off for new investments, which included fossil fuel investments – along with most everything else in what may turn out to be the biggest corporate welfare program since the ETS. The International Energy Agency stated that there can be no new fossil fuel investments if we are to achieve our climate targets.

And they cut overseas climate financing from $250m to $100m.

And on May 29 2025 the New Zealand Government released a series of proposed changes to RMA regulations. These changes are additional to, and sometimes overlapping with, the two RMA amendment bills (the first already passed in October 2024 and the second passed in August 2025). The proposed changes to RMA regulations would mean: 

• Stock would be allowed to graze in natural wetlands that have endangered species;
• It would further entrench the changes to the hierarchy of water allocation and mean that freshwater can be allocated for dairy expansion even if it means there is not enough water for the ecosystem or human health;
• Removing or weakening the nitrogen fertiliser cap that currently exists for dairy farms;
• Weaker environmental bottom lines for freshwater – such as nitrate, sediment, phosphate – to allow more water pollution;
• Forestry slash could no longer be regulated by local councils to a higher standard than central government allowed;
• Making it easier to consent mining in ecologically important areas like wetlands. 

The fact that only 10% of original wetlands remain, that most lowland rivers and lakes are highly polluted with nutrients mainly from intensive agriculture, and that three quarters of native freshwater fish and two thirds of our freshwater birds are threatened with extinction, does not appear in the discussion documents. All of the proposed measures would make this even worse by allowing more intensive agribusiness.

June 3rd 2025 found the Prime Minister attacking international climate scientists who had called out the New Zealand Government for attempting to change the measurement of methane warming. The scientists’ concerns ran on the front page of the Financial Times.

The Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance is a global group of countries committed to moving beyond oil and gas. The decision by the Luxon Government to subsidise fossil fuel exploration meant it was only a matter of time before it got kicked out, so on June 25 2025 it left.

The Climate Commission produced its latest emissions projections on July 25, 2025, which showed New Zealand is 7Mt CO2e over its 2022-25 emissions reduction target. The PR spin was that New Zealand was on track to meet the 2022-25 budget but it only appeared to be on track because of a change in methodology which reduced calculated emissions by 7Mt CO2e. The Climate Commission requested that the Government adjust its budgets to account for the change in methodology, but the Government refused and then claimed to be on track!

The changes to the Crown Minerals Act passed on July 31, 2025. The headline was the grossly irresponsible overturning of the offshore oil and gas exploration ban. But the changes to decommissioning costs were also important. 

One of the global oil industry tactics is to take the profits from productive oil fields, but, as the field is exhausted, they pay another company to take ownership of the field including the end-of-life decommissioning liability. The last company then goes bankrupt and the government has to pay for decommissioning. This happened with the Tui oil field and taxpayers had to pay $300m to decommission it after Tamarind Oil went bankrupt. The Ardern Government changed the law after the Tamarind experience so that the company that made all the money from the oil field retains responsibility for decommissioning costs – it’s called trailing liability. 

But with this new Jones amendment to the Crown Minerals Act, the Resource Minister and the Finance Minister can allow the sale of an oil field without the decommissioning liability. It was a present to the oil industry, who can once again hand over the decommissioning costs to Government if they can get Ministers to agree. Jones you may remember is the person who couldn’t be trusted with a ministerial credit card. He defrauded the government by using his ministerial credit card to buy hotel pornography in 2010 and was forced to pay back $5000 when it was revealed.

August 4 2025 found the Government celebrating the decision by the four oligopoly electricity generator-retailers to subsidise the survival of the Huntly coal fired power station. Huntly generates the most expensive electricity in the country, so when it runs it sets the price all generators get paid at a high level, regardless of how low their actual generating costs are. The four gentailers have constrained new cheap renewables to keep Huntly in the mix.

The second RMA Amendment Bill (Resource Management (Consenting and Other System Changes) Amendment Act 2025) passed its third reading on August 14, 2025. This Act delivered a number of changes including:

• As demanded by Dairy NZ and other agribusiness lobby groups, Freshwater Farm Plans can be signed off by agribusiness industry bodies approved by the Minister, and now apply to fewer farms;
• The changes to section 70 of the RMA empower a regional council to authorise the permitted discharge of contaminants to freshwater that may cause disgusting pollution (or in legal language ‘may result in the production of conspicuous oil or grease films, scums or foams; a conspicuous change in the colour or clarity of the receiving waters; any emission of objectionable odour; the rendering of fresh water unsuitable for consumption by farm animals’); or significant adverse effects on aquatic life in the receiving waters.
• It restricted regional councils ability to protect biodiversity in the inshore marine environment by giving the Director General of Ministry of Primary Industry the ability to veto any regional plan that restricts fishing (ie the new law overturns the Motiti court decision to protect inshore marine biodiversity);
• Coal fired or gas fired power plants must now have their consent applications fast tracked and processed within 12 months;
• It allows the Minister to change regional council plans and policy by regulation without normal consultation, overriding local democracy; 
• It stops councils planning processes while the government’s new RMA replacement is being developed, but allows private plan changes to proceed. Private plan changes are used by private developers to override existing planning constraints.

EDS stated that “There’s nothing balanced here. The Government is systematically dismantling our environmental laws.” 

The cost of inaction over climate change also reared its head on August 14, 2025 (busy day) as it became clear the government will need to increase the Natural Hazards Commission levy, due to the cost of climate-amplified extreme weather events. The levy is added to the cost of home insurance. Ironically the Minister responsible is David Seymour, who opposes action on climate, yet he planned to increase the levy by about $200 per year to pay for recovery from climate-amplified disasters.

And at the same time, councils will be required to improve their response to natural disasters made worse by climate. But there will be no further government funding to help them so it will have to be covered by rates, further adding to the cost of living crisis.

The controversial Sunfield housing development on a floodplain south of Auckland, another of the Government’s chosen fast track projects, was also suspended on August 14, 2025. The project faced opposition from local authorities due to concerns about flooding, stormwater, water supply, transport, land subsidence and more. The project had been rejected through normal planning processes but had gained entry to the fast track. The company behind the development is Winton Land. As Radio NZ reported: “Its director Christopher Meehan gave $50,000 to Act in 2023 and $103,260 to National. Speargrass Holdings, a company Meehan is a director of, also gave $52,894 to National in 2022. In total, $206,154.23 was donated.” Chris Bishop, National Party Campaign Chair, had publicly supported the company in its legal battle with the former Government.

On August 15 2025 the EPA’s list of company emissions didn’t include some of the biggest climate polluters, after the government changed the rules so that agribusinesses no longer have to be transparent about their pollution. That covers half of New Zealand climate emissions.

In a sign of things to come, on August 20, 2025 Tower Insurance moved to increase the cost of insurance for those houses at risk of climate flooding and withdrew cover entirely for some. Tower earlier warned of the need for a climate adaptation framework, which the Government has failed to deliver.

Also on August 20 2025, the operator of Maui, New Zealand’s biggest gas field, confirmed that it was coming to the end of its life and would need to be decommissioned at some point soon, possibly as early as March 2026. This would add to the energy crisis. The Government’s decision to abandon the NZ Battery Project, the Gas Transition Plan and the Decarbonising Industry Investment looked pretty stupid.

August 21 2025 found Chris Bishop weakening the clean vehicle standards.

The Government tried to have its cake and eat it on September 16 2025 by claiming that seabed mining and offshore wind generation are compatible in spite of evidence to the contrary.

On September 19 2025 it was revealed that the Government is looking to take the Independent Climate Commission out of the process of providing advice on Emissions Reduction Plans. The Climate Minister Simon Watts had previously denied any such proposal existed.

Policy after policy was designed to increase industrial dairy and it was showing in Fonterra’s climate reporting. The 2025 Fonterra Annual report published on September 25, 2025 found that climate pollution had increased 2.2% from 2024.

On September 29 2025 we got a glimpse of the wave of dairy conversions being approved under the weaker freshwater rules – at least 18,000 new cows in Canterbury alone – many in the most polluted zones. Each dairy cow has an effluent stream equivalent to 14 people, so the environmental impact of an extra 18,000 cattle is like 250,000 new people added to the Canterbury plains without sewerage treatment. 

The Government finally released, on October 1st 2025, its package of energy reforms, ostensibly to address high prices and security in the energy sector. The package centred on taxpayer subsidies to build a fossil gas (LNG) import facility, subsidies offered to gentailers for new coal and gas fired generation, and re-announcing subsidies for oil and gas exploration – Trump would be proud. The LNG import facility would result in very expensive gas and electricity and at best would cover only one third of the dry year risk.  Cheaper renewable energy options were sidelined. Virtually nobody thought it would work to deal with the energy crisis – the three parties in the coalition could agree on very little other than they like fossil fuels and don’t care much about climate! The oligopoly gentailer electricity companies were left free to keep maximising profits by propping up fossil fuel generation, and hence their share prices rose after the announcement.

On October 4 2025, the Canterbury regional council revealed that it had already approved 21,000 extra dairy cattle this year, with another 15,000 in process of being approved. This will add to the nitrate contamination of the region.

The State of the Marine Environment report was released by Statistics NZ and the Ministry for the Environment on October 8, 2025. It found that climate change was causing rising temperatures and acidification in the marine environment which was a threat to marine ecosystems as well as fisheries. Climate driven sea level rise and storms are a threat to tens of thousands of coastal homes and infrastructure. 

And finally on October 12 2025, the Government announced that it plans to weaken New Zealand’s methane reduction target range to 14% to 24% reduction by 2050 from 2017 levels (currently the target is a 24% to 47% reduction). Methane is responsible for 48% of all New Zealand’s greenhouse pollution, overwhelmingly from agribusiness. The new target is built on the livestock industry’s preferred metric for methane warming (GWP*) rather than the science accepted by the IPCC, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and the Climate Commission. The Government also plans to ensure that agribusiness never faces a price on its methane emissions, at the same time its policies are increasing the dairy herd. Pacific leaders were unsurprisingly disappointed.

The Climate Minister was forced to concede that the new methane target may not be consistent with global obligations to limit emissions to 1.5 degrees of warming. Pricing agricultural emissions and associated mitigation technologies were responsible for 62% of all emissions reductions identified for the 2031-35 Emissions Budget! This single decision on weakening the methane target will result in increased warming equivalent to the entire UK annual emissions.

The world’s largest international climate adaptation conference was held in Christchurch on October 14 2025 but the Climate Minister was unable to go as his party whips would not give him leave from Parliament. Those 1800 attendees from around the world, including scientists and policy experts, will not be able to influence Simon Watts, and vice versa, which was a pity. 

The long awaited Climate Adaptation Framework was released two days later on October 16, 2025 – all two pages of it. It sidestepped the central question of who pays, and nor did it give a clear direction to stop building on floodplains and other climate exposed sites, which the insurance industry has been calling for. Of course it would be a bit embarrassing if the Government did do this given they fast tracked a housing development on a floodplain for one of their political donors. Maybe not attending the adaptation conference made sense after all.

The key vote to put a price on shipping emissions took place on October 17, 2025 at the International Maritime Organisation meeting – New Zealand abstained again.

Like a dog with a bone, October 20 2025 found the Government proposing to spend an astonishing $44 billion to $54 billion of our money on a hand picked group of 17 new motorways. These motorways were chosen by the National Party before the last election for political reasons. They were not run through a normal capital spending prioritisation process, in which you might decide we need a new hospital in Dunedin before a new motorway for example, or assessed for their climate impact. In the latest release of costings, the Government changed the way that benefit-to-cost ratios were calculated to make it seem saner, but it is not. The Northern Expressway alone would come at a cost of $70 per vehicle per trip for 30 years assuming that traffic doubled. 

The Government announced that it would roll back mandatory climate reporting on October 22, 2025. The number of large corporate entities that must report climate pollution will be cut from 170 to just 76. And directors will no longer be liable if the entities fail to follow the law. Reducing climate disclosures makes it harder for customers and investors to understand which companies face climate risk and harder for the government to understand the national climate pollution profile to design policies to reduce emissions.

The first national flood risk model was released by Earth Sciences New Zealand (NIWA and GNS amalgamated) on October 30, 2025 showing “more than 750,000 New Zealanders live in locations exposed to flooding from one-in-100-year rainfall flooding events. And this number could increase to more than 900,000 with a further 3 degrees of warming due to climate change.” This flood risk model did not include increased risks due to sea level rise or coastal storm surges from climate change. You might think this level of risk would give the Government pause on its climate obstruction agenda, but seemingly not.

On October 31, 2025 another new solar farm was approved, this time in the Wairarapa, through the normal consenting process. The Government tried to justify its anti-democratic anti-environment fast track law on the basis that it was needed to consent new solar generation. In fact large amounts of new solar has been consented through the normal RMA process with environmental guardrails. 

And on the evening of November 4, 2025 the Government announced a raft of changes to gut climate laws and the ETS. The fake consensus on climate change was officially pronounced dead. 

• The ETS will no longer be managed in a way to align with our Paris climate target. This follows the Government systematically dismantling efforts to cut domestic emissions (see above!) yet still failing to commit to purchasing offshore carbon credits to meet the Paris target. 
• The independent Climate Commission will be stripped of its role of providing advice prior to the Government developing its Emission Reductions Plans. 
• The Government will be able to amend Emission Reduction Plans at will, without public consultation.
• The target of a carbon neutral public sector was moved from 2025 to 2050. 

The price of carbon on the ETS market immediately dropped. The policy of the government is plainly to increase greenhouse pollution.

On November 6, 2025 the Government announced it was expanding the fossil gas related activities that were eligible for government subsidies.

A November 13 2025 analysis of the greenhouse gas emissions of New Zealand’s largest companies showed that half have increased their emissions. The biggest increase came from New Zealand’s biggest climate polluter, Fonterra, which increased its emissions by half a million tonnes. Luxon’s pro-pollution policy settings are having exactly the result one would expect.

On November 14 2025 the CEO of the country’s biggest fossil gas user, Methanex, admitted that it was unlikely that the Government’s policy of restarting oil and gas exploration would make any difference to the future of fossil gas in New Zealand, as the gas fields were mature and earlier exploration had been unsuccessful. This was of course completely contrary to all the Government rhetoric.

On November 17 2025 the Luxon Government further weakened the fuel efficiency standards, which will make it easier to import more polluting vehicles. Chris Bishop said that vehicle importers told him there was a shortage of supply of low emissions vehicles in New Zealand. But of course it was the change in Government policy which caused the collapse in electric vehicle imports by 70%. 

Also on November 17 2025 the Government announced that its preferred transport spend in Wellington is a four lane motorway that would cut up to ten minutes off MPs’ travel time to the airport during peak hour. It would cost $4 billion and replace earlier plans developed by the Wellington councils to prioritise low emissions transport solutions to congestion.

The climate talks were underway in Brazil and on November 18 2025 New Zealand was awarded the ‘Fossil of the Day’ prize for the Government’s to slash methane reduction targets in the middle of a climate emergency.

The new Boston Consulting Group report on the New Zealand energy situation came out on November 19 2025 and like others poured cold water on the role of fossil gas, as the country is “not about to usher in a new era of abundant gas”. The Government’s favourite policies – restarting oil and gas exploration with government subsidies and an LNG import facility – were not the top policy options, rather they recommended accelerating investment in renewable generation.  

New Zealand dropped further in global league tables on climate action, released on November 19, 2025. And of course did not join the countries calling for a roadmap for the phaseout of fossil fuels on the sideline of COP30.

On November 20 2025 the Finance Minister revealed that the Government was kicking the can down the road on increasing the Natural Hazards Levy, which covers the increasing cost of climate disasters. Even though the Levy is estimated to be 50% too low to cover the likely cost of future disasters, the Government is leaving that climate liability for a future Government.

Meanwhile the Government was trying to reassure the carbon market that it really did have serious ambitions to cut emissions after the price of ETS carbon credits dropped significantly. The market was not convinced,prices remained low and the December 3 2025 ETS auction failed to sell a single 

Unit.

As if to prove the wisdom of the carbon markets, the very next day on December 4 2025 the Government announced its formal response to the recommendations from the Climate Commission to strengthen New Zealand’s climate response – the Climate Minister announced that the Government would reject the Commission’s recommendations, every single one of them.

And speaking of rejecting advice, December 2025 also found the Government rejecting advice from the Infrastructure Commission that rushing into an LNG import terminal was a bad idea when there were better cheaper options that needed exploration. MBIE officials had also stated that there was a ‘low need’ for the terminal – this advice was originally redacted from publicly released papers, and only came to light as a result of a complaint to the Ombudsman about the redactions.

Four days after introducing the Climate Change Response (2050 Target and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, the Government passed it under urgency on December 12 2025. No public submissions were allowed. The Bill cuts New Zealand’s methane reduction target from a minimum of 24% to a minimum of 14%. Officials told the Ministers that the new weaker target was consistent with 2.7 degrees of warming or higher – a level the UN has described as catastrophic. The Government said it acted to advance the profitability and trade competitiveness of agribusiness.

On December 17 2025, while it was continuing to weaken New Zealand’s efforts to cut climate pollution, it was releasing new guidance for carbon capture and storage. CCS is every climate polluter’s answer when asked to cut emissions.

On December 18 2025 it was revealed that new houses continue to be connected to the fossil gas network, locking in households to gas dependence, even though it is more expensive than electricity and more polluting.

The year rounded out on December 19 2025 with the Supreme Court ruling that the Government must take climate change into account when making decisions on tendering blocks for oil and gas exploration. Shane Jones was not happy.

2026

On January 29 2026 it was revealed that major insurance companies are pulling out of Westport due to flooding risk made worse by climate change. Westport needs support to adapt but there is limited funding after the Government disestablished the Climate Emergency Response Fund in 2024.

Also on January 29 2026 the Government released its amended Second Emissions Reduction Plan covering the years 2026-2030. The Plan had to be amended after they decided not to put a price on agribusiness emissions. The Government has repeatedly claimed that pricing emissions is the key tool to reducing them, however the now amended ERP2 assumes that agribusiness emissions will follow roughly the same pathway of reduction without a price signal. They simply assumed that the lack of price would have no impact on emissions and hence there was no need to model the impact, so they did not, which is not credible. And as we shall see, Fonterra’s emissions were already rising rapidly.

On Waitangi Day, February 6 2026, the expert panel released its draft decision to reject TTR’s fast track application to mine the seabed off Taranaki. It was a defeat for the Government and a win for the planet. It was a direct consequence of the earlier victory of the environment movement to force the Government to backdown on direct ministerial decision making on fast track projects.

The Government was back to its LNG import terminal on February 9 2026 announcing that it was planning to pay for the multibillion subsidy to fossil fuels by levying everyone’s electricity bills.

On February 11 2026 the Government was forced to admit that the UK Government has been raising concerns with New Zealand ministers about the backtracking on climate and biodiversity policy. Earlier Ministers had denied it had ever been mentioned.

The Infrastructure Commission released its National Infrastructure Plan on February 17 2026 which threw cold water on the Government’s claims that the nation needs an LNG import terminal. The Commission agreed with most everyone that LNG is a high cost project which could lock us into expensive imported fossil gas and take capital away from developing cheaper renewable generation and storage. The Government refused to listen to reason.

On March 19 2026 the New Zealand and Irish Governments announced a joint plan to pretend that they can cut emissions without cutting cow numbers. Both Governments are trying to overturn agreed climate warming science to claim that methane isn’t really such a problem.

Meanwhile UK officials were meeting with their NZ counterparts on March 24 2026 as part of the UK NZ free trade agreement and asking them to explain how the decisions to subsidise fossil fuels and weaken the methane reduction targets are consistent with the environmental provisions in the agreement. NZ risks breaching the UK and EU free trade deals, which include provisions not to weaken environmental protection, and this could result in costs to NZ exporters.

In a similar vein the Sustainable Business Council and the Climate Leaders Coalition released a report on March 31 2026 that argued there were significant economic benefits for pursuing decarbonisation. The Government pretty much ignored it. They did however listen closely to the secret lobbying of two leading members of the CLC, Fonterra and Z Energy, who wanted a law change to protect them from litigation for the harm their climate pollution was causing.

On April 1, 2026 Fonterra admitted it had been misleading customers by claiming its Anchor butter was “100% NZ Grass Fed”. In fact a large part of Fonterra cows’ diets is palm kernel, sourced from palm plantations responsible for destroying rainforests in Indonesia and Malaysia. The Commerce Commission had refused to act against Fonterra’s blatantly unlawful advertising so it was left to Greenpeace to prosecute them.

The growth in dairy pollution was also seen in the Greenhouse Gas Inventory report for 2024, released a week later on April 16 2026. Emissions rose from increased milk production and synthetic nitrogen fertiliser use even as they fell in other areas such as sheep.

Sniffing around the fast track rubber stamp, the promoters of a lignite to urea factory announced they wanted to fast track their super-polluting business on April 22 2026.

Meanwhile on May 4 2026 the Government was announcing (in the middle of a 222 page technical publication) its decision to allow beef cattle and deer to graze in wetlands even if those wetlands had identified populations of threatened native species (p.135). Also it decided to strip councils of their ability to regulate forestry planting and slash (p.68-9), slash which had caused truly massive damage during Cyclone Gabrielle.

And right on cue the Climate Commission released its National Climate Change Risk Assessment on May 7 2026 which suggested that more extreme weather events like Cyclone Gabrielle are more likely due to climate change. So maybe we should help councils control forestry slash rather than help forestry companies avoid their responsibilities? The Commission also found that inland flooding would threaten 590,000 buildings, so maybe fast tracking National Party donors’ housing development on a floodplain isn’t in the national interest? And maybe we should, you know, cut emissions.

The OECD released its report on New Zealand on May 11 2026 concluding that the Government’s proposed LNG import terminal risked locking New Zealand into expensive polluting fossil fuel energy. OECD economic and energy experts also concluded that fossil gas would not help with the dry year risk. They were critical of the subsidies to diesel vehicles and penalties on electric vehicles. Luxon’s intellectual deconstruction of the OECD report was to call it ‘a load of rubbish’ and he planned to proceed as per Muldoon with his Think Big fossil fuel project. 

In order to protect climate polluters from legal action, National announced on May 12 2026 that they would legislate to stop citizens going to the courts to seek common law relief for the harm that climate polluters have caused them. The law would retrospectively protect Fonterra and Z Energy from current court action brought by Mike Smith. 

In a major backdown on May 25 2026 the Government was forced to provide limited support for businesses to reduce their fossil gas use, in the form of an 80% loan guarantee for investments to cut gas use. The Government had abolished the GIDI scheme back in December 2023, which had provided grants to do the same thing. The Government had wasted two and half years, misleading businesses with magical thinking about oil and gas exploration, so that businesses didn’t invest in the transition and, even worse, thousands of new houses and businesses were connected to fossil gas that has no future.The loan guarantee scheme didn’t start till the end of July 2026 and will have little effect on cutting gas dependence in the short term.

Meanwhile it was revealed in court documents on May 25 2026 that Fonterra and Z Energy had been secretly passing their briefing documents to the private email address of the PM’s chief policy advisor and providing documents in hard copy form. These documents provided the template for the government’s legislation to block climate tort law. The PM’s office unlawfully failed to disclose these documents under the Official Information Act. Fonterra and Z Energy are leading members of the Climate Leaders Coalition – but where exactly are they leading?

Shane Jones went to Cabinet on May 27, 2026 to divert $50m of taxpayers money to two of his favoured mining companies, even though these two companies did not meet any of the criteria for receiving money from the Regional Infrastructure Fund. The Cabinet approved the funds nevertheless.

This $50m largesse for Jones’ favoured mining companies was in contrast to the Department of Conservation which had its baseline funding cut by $37m over four years in the Budget released on May 28 2026. The Budget maintained the $200m subsidy for fossil fuel exploration, but was missing around $1.4billion in revenue from the sale of carbon credits due to the failure of ETS auctions.

On June 9 2026 the Government announced it was proceeding with an LNG import terminal but would no longer pay for it by levying individual consumers’ power bills, but would make electricity generators pay for it (and they will no doubt then pass the cost onto consumers). This was in spite of opposition by BCG, Meridian, OECD, Sapere, Concept Consulting, Infrastructure Commission and the climate movement.

On June 11, 2026 it was revealed that the Government had suppressed the part of an MBIE report in which the modelling by Concept Consulting found low need for an LNG import terminal.

No wonder the Government doesn’t want people to hear the truth about the cost of their fossil fuel obsession when the Treasury had to admit on June 11 2026 that it would cost $5 billion to buy offshore carbon credits to meet New Zealand’s 2030 Paris climate commitments, because of the failure to cut emissions domestically. It was a $5 billion bill for inaction.

And as if to underline this inaction, it was revealed on June 17 2026 that the Government had decided to scrap the ban on coal boilers that was due to come into place in 2037.

And on June 18 2026 Shane Jones launched an attack on the Supreme Court for their December ruling that climate change was a mandatory consideration for the Government when deciding whether to offer up new blocks for oil and gas exploration. The permits at issue in the court case were those issued to Jones political donors, Greymouth Petroleum. Jones threatened new legislation to override the Supreme Court decision.

A few days later on June 22 2026, Shane Jones revealed that he is planning to put compensation clauses into the deals when he gives $200m to oil and gas companies, to protect oil companies from changes in government policy after the election. The $200m slush fund is overseen by a handpicked group of oil and gas people including John Pagani who was External Affairs Manager at New Zealand Oil and Gas when it paid Tamarind Oil to take over the end-of-life Tui oil field – Tamarind later went bankrupt leaving the taxpayer with the $300m decommissioning cost to which NZOG contributed nothing.

In spite of the relentless subsidization of fossil fuels, their share of all energy use continues to decline, as revealed by EECA on June 24, 2026. This is a pattern repeated globally – fossil fuel companies are struggling to compete on price so are relying on government subsidies and regulatory protection.

But once again the election pressed on the Government, and hence on June 25 2026 they announced a princely $7m would be offered to support the installation of rooftop solar. Yep a whole $7 million. 

Controlling land use (especially forestry) on extremely erosion prone land was the subject of Gisborne District Council’s Plan Change 7. The Council was responding to Cyclone Gabrielle’s dramatic impact on the east cape, in which erosion and forestry slash caused huge damage to people and the environment. Plan Change 7 would have given the Council the ability to control land use on the most erosion prone land and require permanent forest coverage, but it was blocked by Chris Bishop’s plan stop. And so back in December 2025 the Council had sought an exemption from the plan stop. Seven months later on June 28 2026, Bishop said no. The Government also declined to fund any transition of the erosion prone land.

The Climate Minister reprimanded councils for making planning decisions based on high impact climate change scenarios on July 1 2026. These are the same councils that the Government has blocked from taking action to reduce risks from extreme weather events, such as Gisborne trying to control forestry slash but blocked by central government, or Auckland trying to control new houses on floodplains but central Government fast tracking just such developments. Local Government NZ wrote back to ask the central government to develop a national adaptation plan with clear cost sharing, something which it has so far refused to do.

It was an interesting choice of day for the Climate Minister to upbraid Councils for proper planning process given that also on July 1 2026 the Ombudsmen upheld the complaint against the Prime Minister for unlawfully withholding documents his office had received from Fonterra and Z Energy regarding a law change to block the climate lawsuit they faced. Z Energy’s CEO said the Prime Minister’s office told them to hand deliver the key briefing note, presumably to ensure there was no official email trail. The Bill to retrospectively protect Z Energy and Fonterra from climate torts received its first reading the next day.

On July 6 2026 we found out that 40% of dairy agribusinesses were illegally not reporting their synthetic nitrogen fertiliser use, as they are required to under national regulations. The former head of agribusiness lobby group Federated Farmers, and now current Associate Agriculture Minister, said he wasn’t concerned about it. Increase in fertiliser use was identified in the national Greenhouse Gas inventory as a key driver of increased climate pollution, as well as water pollution.

There was some good news on July 6 2026 also, as the Government finally passed its offshore wind legislation. Most of the offshore wind consortia had already left the country due to the fast tracking of seabed mining in Taranaki, the same location that was identified for offshore wind. But after the environment movement blocked the seabed mining, and now the new rules passed, there is one offshore wind developer left who might proceed. Taranaki Offshore Wind partnership has been delayed for four years to start its 1000 MW plant by the Government’s seabed mining obsession but is now looking to proceed.

And a small win on July 7 2026 as Levin locals forced central government to reinstate lower speeds on one of their dangerous roads, which Simeon Brown had sped up.

On July 15 2026 the Government said it would amend the climate law to require councils to prepare climate adaptation plans, but without any funding it won’t mean anything.

New Zealand’s biggest solar farm connected to the grid on July 18 2026, the 202 MW Tauhei Solar Farm, near Te Aroha. The solar farm was consented under the COVID fast track process, which retained environmental guardrails, in 70 working days. Because of those environmental guardrails, there were many conditions imposed such as native bat habitat trees protected, a large wetland was restored, large amounts of riparian planting, and 100,000 native plants. Luxon’s new fast track law removed these environmental guardrails.

While the Climate Commission is entirely powerless to cut emissions it can nonetheless issue reports, and it put out a scathing Emissions Reduction Monitoring Report on July 22 2026. The Commission found that New Zealand’s emission reductions stalled in 2024 and we are on track to miss the reduction targets, which surprised no-one. Dairy cow emissions increased 1.1% in 2024 compared to 2023 – they pointed out the obvious: without a price on agricultural methane agribusinesses will not take steps to cut emissions, and indeed only 7% intend to do so. 

And to much fanfare the Government celebrated the issuing of the first new offshore oil and gas exploration permit on July 29 2026. It was to a three man company in Australia who are hoping to get some of the $200m in subsidies as they do a desk based assessment. So it isn’t too serious but nonetheless it is incredibly stupid in a climate crisis. 

July 30 2026 found the Government locking in spending billions on a new motorway north of Auckland with a benefit to cost ratio of 0.7.  The true cost of this one motorway is about $9 billion or 10% of the entire national land transport budget. This means a lot of affordable transport projects with much higher BCR cannot be built as there will be no money.

On July 31 2026 they opened the doors on the Gas Transition Loan Scheme, reversing their previous policy. The delay has cost us dearly as many businesses assumed that the government had a realistic plan to support their use of fossil gas when all the government really had was culture war talking points. It was later revealed that the loans, to replace gas dependent equipment, can be used for more polluting equipment like coal!

On August 8 2026 they announced new measures to support the rollout of EV chargers. Which sounds good until you realise that they had previously promised 10,000 EV public points by 2030. There are only 2000 charge points currently, only 600 were added since they came into government, and the rate of new installations is dropping. They are nowhere near meeting the target.

And in a similar vein on August 10 2026 the Ministers Brown, Jones and Bishop were crowing about the first solar farm approved through their fast track – Lodestone Energy in the Mackenzie country. What they didn’t mention was that Lodestone’s previous nine solar farms went through a normal consenting process, in less sensitive ecosystems. There are over 6000 hectares of solar farms lining up to get individual fast track approvals in the Mackenzie region, which will collectively have a large impact if they proceed on a fast track with no environmental guardrails.

Oddly enough the Government did not put out a self-congratulatory press release about the firing up of Glenbrook Steel’s new electric arc furnace also on August 10 2026 which will save the country about a million tonnes of emissions a year (about the same as Fonterra’s increase in emissions). The project was part funded by the Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry fund that the Luxon Government shut down.

The Climate Commission released a report on climate change adaptation on August 11 2026 which was highly critical of the government’s lack of progress. The cost of climate related disasters is increasing but the natural disaster spending by the government is 97% on response and recovery and only 3% on reducing future risk.

And as if to underline the point made by the Climate Commission, also on August 11 2026  it was revealed that Chris Bishop is blocking efforts by Gisborne District Council to control the harm caused by forestry slash and erosion during major weather events. He was refusing to allow a plan change to proceed which would control forestry on highly erodible land, which had been the source of the massive damage caused during Cyclone Gabrielle. The Government stated that the forestry industry did not like the proposed changes. No kidding.

New climate pollution figures released on August 13 2026 by the EPA showed the big petrol companies were not cutting emissions. However the nation’s largest climate polluters are no longer required to report their emissions after agribusiness was excused from reporting by the Government, meaning that the EPA reporting covers less than half of NZ’s emissions.

But it seems not enough emissions for Shane Jones who issued a new oil and gas mining permit to Matahio Energy on August 13 2026. Matahio is headed up by Wai Lid-Wong, Susan Prior and Rob Fisher who previously had senior roles at Tamarind Energy. Tamarind went bankrupt and cost New Zealand taxpayers over $300million to clean up the mess they left behind at Tui oil field. Sounds like Jones’ kind of people.

Given all these policies to increase climate emissions and block efforts to adapt to climate change, it was no surprise that on August 14 2026 it was discovered that Erika Stanford the Education Minister had removed all references to climate change in the year 1 to 10 curriculum. Best people don’t know about it I guess.

And speaking of hiding things, the Ombudsmen ruled on August 14 2026 that the Government should not have hidden the key conclusions in a consultant’s report on the proposed LNG import terminal. The consultant concluded that the LNG terminal wouldn’t have much impact on electricity prices, and that conclusion was redacted when documents were released publicly. The Government was telling the public the proposed LNG import terminal would reduce future electricity prices, so the consultants’ conclusion was inconvenient (futures prices for electricity are trending lower but the Electricity Authority said the lower future prices were due to the influx of new renewable generation, not more fossil gas). 

And then on August 17 2026 the government handed out $250k to councils to help them recover from extreme weather events earlier in the year. Included in the list was Gisborne District Council, which the government had previously blocked from controlling forestry to reduce impacts from extreme weather events. The press release did not mention climate change.

The Government used its Parliamentary majority on August 18 2026 to pass a law retrospectively blocking citizens from going to court to seek redress for the harm caused by companies’ climate pollution. Lobbying by Fonterra and Z Energy, kept secret in breach of the Official Information Act, led to an urgent law change to block a current court case against them by Mike Smith, even after the Supreme Court ordered that it could proceed. There was a wave of opposition.

On August 21 2026 Bishop announced they were keeping the Clean Vehicle Standard he had earlier gutted. The standard is so weak and ineffectual that the industry itself was happy to keep it.

On August 25 2026 Australian coal mining company Bathurst Resources lodged its fast track application to devastate the amazing ecosystems of the Denniston Plateau to mine more coal. The Department of Conservation spent over 500 hours of staff time just in a single month assisting in the preparation of the application – no doubt there was more. While the applicant needs to pay DoC for these hours, it is time that staff were not using to protect biodiversity.

After systematically dismantling efforts to improve the fuel efficiency of the NZ car fleet, the Government on August 31 2026 decided it needed to cancel a scheduled fuel excise increase, at a cost of $1.476 billion. This was because petrol prices are so high from Trump’s war and the car fleet is inefficient. How the Government will now pay for its country-bankrupting ambitions for new motorways remains unclear.

It can be confusing tracking all the government money being gifted to mining companies and on September 7 2026 it was the turn of Todd Energy being given $23m from the $200m gas slush fund – the Gas Security Fund.

The Education Minister was backtracking on the removal of climate change from the year 1 to 10 curriculum on September 17 2026. She said she was not involved in writing the curriculum, however evidence over the next weeks would show that there was a close relationship between her and those charged with assembling the new curriculum but that they were deliberately hiding it.

And in what Chris Bishop surely considers the highpoint of the War on Nature, on September 22 2026 the Natural Environment Bill and the Planning Bill, the Government’s replacements to the Resource Management Act, were passed through Parliament. The bills are a wholesale attack on environmental protection, as EDS said “The bills were seriously deficient when introduced, deteriorated at select committee and even further through extensive last-minute amendment papers”. Here are some lowlights:

• Urban tree protections effectively removed.
• Removed resource caps eg fertiliser caps
• Regulatory relief means councils will have to compensate landowners for biodiversity protection etc
• No enforceable environmental limits so eg dairy companies can pollute already polluted rivers even more
• Removing marine protected areas introduced by regional councils
• Removing the precautionary principle
• Removing the hierarchy of Te Mana o te Wai – that ecosystem health and human health had to come before commercial interests when making water consent decisions
• Climate change cannot be considered when making planning or consenting decisions
• Public participation is highly limited

And while on the one hand on September 22 2026 the government was removing regulatory constraints on dairy pollution and expansion with the new Natural Environment Bill, on the other they were subsidising new irrigation projects that will lead to more dairy pollution with $36 million in cheap government loans.

And also on September 23 2026 the decision on spending billions on a new LNG import terminal and expensive imported fossil gas was delayed until after the election. The previously announced closure of Methanex, the country’s biggest user of fossil gas, plus the growth of renewable generation, was making it harder to justify the fossil fuel subsidies.

More subsidies to oil companies was the order of the day for September 24 2026, with $36m of our money handed over. Even the Government admitted it is unlikely to ever result in any oil and gas but they had $200m to give away and the election was approaching.

Not to be outdone on the climate pollution competition, Fonterra released its annual report on September 24 2026 showing its annual emissions have increased by one million tonnes in just two years. They are now up to 25.3 million tonnes per year, which is about a third of NZ’s total gross emissions or almost a half of the net emissions (though some of their emissions occur overseas). 

Of course there is no cost to Fonterra for all the pollution as the government exempted their emissions from the ETS, though under the Paris climate agreement the New Zealand taxpayer is responsible for buying credits to cover Fonterra’s pollution. But again, it’s unclear if the current government will honour the Paris agreement.

On a happier note on September 25 2026 the coal company Bathurst Resources had their application rejected by the EPA due to insufficient evidence. The green movement was effective in making the fast track more than a rubber stamp for three ministers, as was originally proposed. Sadly Bathurst can come back.

Meanwhile Fonterra told us on September 28 2026 they are planning to increase milk processing capacity in the South Island as tens of thousands of new cows provide more milk (and urine, faeces and methane). Its South Island milk went from 618 million kg milk solids in 2022 to 685 million kgMS in 2026 with 20 more conversions this season.

On September 30, 2026 the environmental NGOs had enough and co-sponsored a complaint to the EU about the NZ Government breaching the sustainability chapter of the EUNZ Free Trade Agreement. As you can see from the list above, the evidence of New Zealand backtracking on its climate commitments is pretty compelling.

Three years of War On Climate

Parliament has risen and the three years of the Luxon led Coalition Government is coming to a close. No doubt there are things I have missed in the list above but probably not much. The evidence is plain – we have a Government which is engaged in a systematic War on Climate as part of its broader War on Climate. Greenpeace and many others are fighting back, defending nature. If you treasure the beauty and wonder of this living planet of ours, join us.