Introduction
Our climate change mitigation work involves assessing and reducing the amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted into the atmosphere by the land transport system.
Transport emissions are a significant contributor to New Zealand’s GHG emissions. Most of these emissions come from the vehicles using the land transport system, but transport infrastructure also creates emissions during its lifecycle of construction, operation and maintenance.
Read our page on the sources of transport-related emissions for more detailed information about each source and what we are doing to assess and reduce them.
Sources of greenhouse gas emissions from transport
Reducing emissions from the land transport system will require coordinated action from NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi, central and local government authorities and the private sector to reduce emissions from all sources.
Our policy
Our operational policy on climate change mitigation can be found in:
We are currently developing additional guidance to support implementation of this policy. This page will be updated once this is available. For further information contact environment@nzta.govt.nz
In addition to the requirements specific to each technical area, all land transport infrastructure activities must fulfil the requirements of:
Specifications
Guidance
Resources and tools
Research
- Transport modelling methodology for determining greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, Beca Limited (2024) [PDF, 962 KB]
- The effect of speed on emissions: summary report, Emission Impossible Limited (2023) [PDF, 1.1 MB]
- Decarbonisation options for transport infrastructure, WSP (2023) [PDF, 3 MB]
- Effect of speed on greenhouse gas emissions from road transport – a review, Emission Impossible Limited, EMM Consulting (2023) [PDF, 1.1 MB]
- Traffic calming: effects on emissions and air quality – literature review, EEM (2022) [PDF, 780 KB]
- Research Report 695: Life cycle assessment of pavements – development of a calculator (2022)
- Research Note 008: VKT and GHG emissions baseline report – a research not (2022)
- Research report 687: Improving our understanding of New Zealand’s vehicle fleet greenhouse gas and harmful emissions using measured emissions data – stage 1 (2022)
- Carbon emissions baselines for infrastructure projects (2022)
- Research Note 004: Evaluating the greenhouse gas emission reduction benefits from land transport mode shift programmes and projects (2021)
- Decarbonisation of road transport network operations in Australia and New Zealand (Austroads 2020)(external link)
- Research Report 462: Lifetime liabilities of land transport using road and rail infrastructure (2011)
- Research Report 391: Low-emission fuel-efficient light vehicles (2009)
Further information
For further information contact environment@nzta.govt.nz
