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Carbon footprint

Transpower recognises that climate change is a significant global and national challenge. It also affects our core business, from challenging our system to cope with increased new generation, such as renewables, to managing risks of severe weather events affecting our assets.  We therefore need to play our part in helping to address climate change.

Our commitment to carbon management takes two forms:

1. measuring our carbon footprint on an annual basis; and
2. implementing new initiatives to reduce our emissions and our environmental impact generally, on an ongoing basis.

Measuring our Footprint

Carbon footprint reports have been completed for 2006-07 (benchmarked against 05-06 financial year emissions) and 07-08 and 08-09.

Like others in the industty, our main emissions continue to be from stocks of sulphur hexafluoride (SF₆), used for insulation and other purposes in substations. The next largest group of emissions are from office-based operations including electricity used in office buildings air and vehicle travel, and waste.

More details on our findings, the carbon footprint process we followed, and the key omissions and exclusions is available below.

Implementing New Initiatives

Our ongoing carbon management programme focuses on our SF6 and office-based operations emissions, introducing new processes and actions in each area to reduce our carbon emissions.

We are focused on adapting our work behaviours to be more environmentally efficient.  Our approach will evolve as we learn more about our emissions profile and compare different carbon management approaches.  See our plan to reduce emissions below.

This site keeps you up to speed on how we are tracking with reducing our emissions.