What powers New Zealand?

I do like statistics, because they can tell quite a powerful story, quite quickly. Stats are shorthand, if we will. So a look at the graphic accompanying this post might make us think that New Zealand was caning it for green power, as 85% of our electricity needs are met by renewables, leaving NZ in 31st place on the global leader board (The Most, 2025, 8:48).

Except. That lovely statistic doesn't take into account that everything is flown or shipped here. And that uses fossil fuelled transport, which we cannot completely account for. We can't/don't account for it as it is the national data of the exporting nations. 

Our fossil fuel consumption adds up to around 67% of our total energy consumption, including coal, fuel and gas (Massey University, 2026); with our great 85% renewables stat meeting only 26% of our total energy needs. That's not to shiny, is it!

We all drive our own cars as public transport doesn't work that well, because our country is long, skinny, and very spread out. In fact 73% of us commute in our own cars (Massey University, 2020, NB: 2019 statistics)... and our fleet of vehicles is one of the oldest in the world (Massey University, 2026) averaging 15 years. Each year, New Zealanders travel 54,000 million kilometres over 5,800 million trips, taking 1,600 million hours of our collective time (Massey University, 2025). We drive 56% of the time, and 81% of that is "as a driver or passenger in a light vehicle (i.e. a van or car; Massey University, 2025). Only 6.5% of us can take public transport to work (Massey University, 2025), and Wellington is probably one of the best organised cities for public transport. The hills and the long corridors into the city probably make it one of the more commuter-friendly places in the country.

Added to that, very little of anything can be effectively recycled in New Zealand, due to how little manufacturing goes on here, and how far away from the big markets we are. It just becomes too expensive for us to ship things for reprocessing. Yes, theoretically Nespresso pods can be recycled, but as we have no aluminium resmelter in New Zealand, all the pods would all have to be collected up and put in a container and shipped to Aussie. That is WAY to expensive, so we pile it up in the hope it will be worth something, someday: and when the pile gets too high, we landfill it. We have one steel resmelter in the North Island, but none in the South Island. All South Island steel waste is likely to be landfilled... especially when the Cook Strait is one of the most expensive pieces of water to cross in the world. 

As a result, we Kiwis are amongst the most wasteful "in the OECD and the majority of [our] waste is landfilled" (Perrot & Subiantoro, 2018, p. 2). So yep, we might look like we are doing well because we have hydro power. But we are not doing so well in other the other fields we are largely ignoring. 

No pats on the back are due right now!

Sam

References:

Hedley, N. (2025, March 18). New Zealand inches closer to 100% renewable electricity. The Progress Playbook. https://theprogressplaybook.com/2025/03/18/new-zealand-inches-closer-to-100-renewable-electricity/

Massey University. (2026). Average age of motor vehicles [Environmental Health Intelligence New Zealand (EHINZ)]. https://www.ehinz.ac.nz/assets/Surveillance-reports/Released_2025/AgeOfVehicles-2505.pdf

Massey University. (2025). Energy use in New Zealand [Environmental Health Intelligence New Zealand (EHINZ)]. https://www.ehinz.ac.nz/assets/Surveillance-reports/Released_2025/EnergyUse2025_final.pdf

Massey University. (2020). Commuting time by mode of transport [Environmental Health Intelligence New Zealand (EHINZ)]. https://ehinz.ac.nz/assets/Surveillance-reports/Released_2020/Commuting-Time-by-Mode-of-Transport.pdf

Perrot, J. F., & Subiantoro, A. (2018). Municipal waste management strategy review and waste-to-energy potentials in New Zealand. Sustainability, 10(9), 3114, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10093114

THE MOST. (2025, November 17). What Share of Electricity Is Renewable? [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/UlK1wiOfcnE