Air Plan
National Policy Statement and National Environmental Standards for Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Industrial Process Heat
The Government released the National Policy Statement for Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Industrial Process Heat (NPS) that came into force on 27 July 2023. It sets out the national objective and supporting policy framework to guide decisions on resource consents.
Preparing and implementing national direction on industrial process heat is an action included in the Government's first emissions reduction plan.
The National Environmental Standards set out nationally consistent rules for specific greenhouse gas emitting activities from industrial process heat and set out requirements for granting resource consents and setting resource consent conditions. The NES will apply to emissions of greenhouse gases from fossil fuel-fired heat devices. For example, a boiler, furnace, engine, or other combustion device that produces industrial process heat from sources including coal, coke, diesel, liquid petroleum gas, natural gas, oil, peat, plastics, and used oil.
The objective of this NPS is to: reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by managing the discharges to air of greenhouse gases from the production of industrial process heat, in order to mitigate climate change and its current and future adverse effects on the environment and the wellbeing of people and communities.
The regulations will achieve this objective by:
- The NPS and NES providing a nationally consistent approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from industrial heat processes.
- Requiring a resource consent to be held for discharges from heat devices generating emissions of 500 tonnes or more of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) per year per site.
- Making the discharge of greenhouse gases from a heat device a restricted discretionary activity if the device burns coal and produces heat at or above 300°C.
- Prohibiting discharges of greenhouse gases from new heat devices that burn coal below 300°C.
- By 2037, existing heat devices that burn coal at temperatures below 300°C will be phased out, and it will be a restricted discretionary activity to discharge greenhouse gases from an existing heat device that burns coal at temperatures below 300°C in the interim.
- Making the discharge of any greenhouse gas from a heat device that burns any fossil fuel other than coal a restricted discretionary activity.
- Requiring applicants/consent holders to include an emissions plan with their application which includes a transition pathway, an assessment of any technically feasible and financially viable lower-emissions alternatives and/or an assessment of the best practicable option to prevent or minimise adverse climate change effects.
- Requiring a suitably qualified person to review the emissions plan for a high-emissions site which each year, emits more than 2,000 tonnes CO2-e.
- Requiring decision-makers to consider the cumulative impacts of industrial greenhouse gas emissions when evaluating resource consent applications.
We have confirmed some Suitably Qualified Persons (SQP) for the purposes of this regulation. We are also happy to consider others as SQP but that must be done before the application is lodged.
Please contact the consents team for more details - esconsents@es.govt.nz
Useful links
An industry factsheet National Direction for Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Industrial Process Heat has been released to inform industry operators and provides a summary of the requirements of the NPS and NES.
The Ministry for the Environment has also released a guide Measuring emissions: A guide for organisations: 2023 detailed guide. The guide is for New Zealand-based organisations wishing to voluntarily measure and report their greenhouse gas emissions. An industry that knows it’s fuel consumption can work out if it requires consent under the NES.
The guide includes:
- how to produce an inventory
- the latest emissions factors for common sources of emissions in New Zealand
- help for organisations to easily calculate their emissions through an interactive spreadsheet
Refer to the NPS and NES for the specific wording of the policy and regulations.
