New Zealand is taking a step forward to reduce fossil emissions

Wellington, March 26: New Zealand administration have come forward as it has decided that Businesses which burn fossil fuels and create dangerous carbon dioxide need to reduce their emissions to a gross zero as soon as possible, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Simon Upton said.

Only farming should be able to offset its greenhouse gas emissions using forests as sinks, a new climate change report recommends.

Pollution level in India has also crossed limits now a day. From 1950 to 2008, India experienced dramatic growth in fossil-fuel CO2 emissions averaging 5.7% per year and becoming the world's third-largest fossil-fuel CO2-emitting country. Indian total emissions from fossil-fuel consumption and cement production have more than doubled since 1994.

Fossil-fuel emissions in India continue to result largely from coal burning with India being the world's third largest producer of coal. Coal contributed 87% of the emissions in 1950 and 71% in 2008; at the same time, the oil fraction increased from 11% to 20%. Indian emissions data reveal little impact from the oil price increases that affected emissions in the United States and western Europe so dramatically in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Most carbon dioxide emissions come from transport, electricity generation or businesses using coal or gas in boilers. It is regarded as the most dangerous greenhouse gas, lingering in the atmosphere for thousands of years.

"We could store carbon in forests over large areas of New Zealand and score a net zero accounting triumph around mid-century, or adopt a more ambitious approach to reducing fossil emissions and make a clear statement about how far biological emissions should be reduced," Upton said if these businesses wanted to offset their emissions, they should be taking care of emissions.

BusinessNZ chief executive Kirk Hope said restricting forestry offsets was not helpful.

"If New Zealand's heavy emitter industries are no longer able to use trees as an offset, with the absence of international units, they will be greatly disadvantaged compared with businesses in other countries."

He said the recommendations would disrupt the operation of the emissions trading system and undercut the work that had been done to improve the role of forestry in the scheme.