Transitioning to a Low Carbon Future

As New Zealand's primary thermal electricity generator, Genesis recognises the need to understand and reduce the impact of our activities on the environment. Our current focus areas are emissions – helping New Zealand transition to a low carbon future, and environmental management, especially around water & wildlife. In 2018 we released our Sustainability Statement and Sustainability Framework, which contain further detail about our overall approach to sustainability.

Genesis is taking action to reduce emissions while balancing climate change considerations, New Zealand's increasing energy demand profile and the need to make sure our customers have a reliable energy supply. Information about our compliance with Emissions Trading Scheme obligations can be found here and details of our carbon footprint from our emissions are contained in the Annual Report and the Genesis Sustainability Update.

Future-gen: Genesis’ low carbon future programme

We share New Zealand’s aspiration to move further and faster to a lower carbon future. We also believe in the potential for electricity to be the enabler of New Zealand’s lower carbon future.

The Future-gen programme is the lens through which we are identifying opportunities to decarbonise New Zealand’s energy sector while continuing to supply reliable, affordable electricity.

We have already made a significant contribution to reducing New Zealand’s carbon footprint, reducing our carbon emissions substantially over the past decade, all while continuing to supply the electricity New Zealand homes and businesses rely on.

Through Future-gen we will continue our track record of reducing carbon emissions in the electricity sector whilst not materially impacting the cost of electricity for New Zealand homes and businesses.

The key ways we will do this are:

More renewables:

Such as Genesis and Tilt Renewables’ recently announced Waipipi Wind Farm in Taranaki. As transport and industrial heating sectors look to electrify in the coming years projects such as this will meet the increased demand with affordable, renewable generation.

Manage the transition:

Genesis is working to reduce and mitigate our existing emissions through partnerships such as Drylandcarbon, a partnership between Genesis, Contact, Z Energy and Air New Zealand. This partnership will establish forests that will help offset carbon emissions from the partner companies.

New technologies:

Genesis will actively seek new technologies that could contribute to a more renewable future. We recently became a member of the NZ Hydrogen Association and we will support Government initiatives exploring advances in energy. We are also driving efficiencies across our generation fleet.

Genesis understands that all aspects of its business can influence the company's environmental footprint – especially our generation activities. In order to reduce the environmental footprint of our generation we:

Identify those who have responsibility for environmental management.
Identify and document all environmental effects associated with our activities.
Identify environmental objectives and develop associated work programmes to address our environmental effects.
Regularly review how well we are implementing our environmental values, meeting our environmental objectives and identify those areas which may require corrective action.
Report publicly on our environmental performance.

Genesis has developed an Environmental Management Framework which utilises a number of different business systems to manage the company's environmental impact. The framework has been tailored to suit the specific nature of our business, legislative requirements and our stakeholders' needs.

Environmental effects are managed via the Genesis Environmental Management Framework and vary depending on whether the activities are associated with its hydro generation sites at Tongariro, Waikaremoana and Tekapo, its thermal generation site at Huntly, or wind generation at Hau Nui.

Environmental mitigation and initiatives

Further information

Reducing our overall carbon footprint

As well as addressing the emissions from our energy generation, we’re also conscious of the impacts of our own offices, staff travel and other operations. To that end we have set a goal to reduce and offset our non-generation emissions. This year we have reported on our Scope 1 and 2 emissions (covering our generation activities, mobile combustion from vehicles, fugitive emissions and our own electricity consumption). This data can be found in our Genesis Sustainability Update. We intend to report on our Scope 3 emissions, from things like our business travel, waste and sold products, within the next 12 months.

We are already taking steps to reduce our operational emissions, with a specific target around transition of our entire light vehicle fleet to EV/hybrid by 2020 and 50% of our truck fleet by 2025. We will build on existing initiatives around our own building energy monitoring and waste management, as well as encouraging use of our shuttles between the Auckland and Hamilton offices, and EV and hybrid pool cars at and between our sites.

Educating kids about sustainability

Through our Genesis School-gen programme, we provide students, teachers and parents with a hands-on learning experience that teaches them about renewable energy and climate change. Since 2006 we have enabled almost 100 schools to generate some of their own electricity using a photovoltaic system and to track their energy use online. All schools in New Zealand also have access to freely available teaching resources and real-time generation data from the solar panels on the School-gen website. This year, we have launched new games and resources, like our Crunch Time quiz game (now updated with multiplayer functionality for classrooms) and our Human Energy Generator, which help kids learn about energy and sustainability in a fun and engaging way. We have also been engaging more recently with secondary school students, especially on the topics of renewable energy and climate change. Our CEO and members of the Executive team have led these discussions, as well as tours around the Huntly power station.

Caring for our environment