Inventories in Practice:
An Example from New Zealand
Hazelle Tomlin
Reporting and Evidence Team

Agriculture and Energy are the largest contributors to New Zealand’s
gross emissions, at 48.1 per cent and 40.7 per cent respectively
NZ Emissions Profile

Institutional Arrangements
• NZ Ministry for the Environment (MfE) is the centralized agency
that compiles the national inventory submission (NIS) and
submit to the UNFCCC
• MPI compiles the agriculture sector inventory, chapter 5 of the
NIS
• Country specific (CS) emission factors (EF’s) are necessary for
NZ because IPCC defaults do not accommodate NZ’s
agricultural circumstances

30,000
32,000
34,000
36,000
38,000
40,000
42,000
1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2017
Kilotonnesofcarbon-dioxideequivalent(KtCO2e)
NZ Agriculture Emission Trends 1990-2017
13.5% increase
since 1990
Since 2005, 2.5%
decrease
0.1% decrease
2016-2017

• Livestock:
• Major - Dairy cattle, Beef cattle, Sheep, Deer
• Minor– Pigs, goats, horses, Alpaca and Llama, Mules and Asses, Poultry
• Crops:
• Barley, wheat, oats, potatoes, maize seed, other seed crops, onions, squash,
and sweetcorn.
• N-fixing – peas, lentils, forage legume seed, grass/clover pasture, lucerne.
• Fertilisers:
• N containing synthetic fertilisers, dolomite and lime
• Mitigation practices:
• Nitrification and Urease inhibitors
NZ Agriculture Inventory - Source categories

2017 Agricultural Emissions Profile by Livestock Industry
• In 2017, agriculture emissions
were 38.9 Mt CO2-e.

Contributors to the change in agricultural emissions
between 1990 and 2017
Categories:
• Dairy
• Beef
• Sheep
• Other
NB Emissions expressed in kilotonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (kt CO2-e)

• Energy requirements model
estimates feed intake and emissions
for dairy cattle, sheep and deer
• Production data and physiological
characteristics used to estimate
metabolisable energy (ME)
requirements
• This is combined with pasture quality
data to estimate intake (DM) per
animal
• There is a linear relationship
between intake and emissions
NZ Ag Inventory - Livestock Model

• The APS is the most important data source for the
inventory
• Smaller data sets are sourced from other organisations
NZ Ag Inventory - Data sources

• 92% of NZ’s agricultural emissions are calculated using a
‘tier 2’ method
• Dairy and beef cattle, sheep and deer
• Cropping emissions
• The remaining proportion are calculated using tier 1
methods, but still use country-specific emission factors
where available
NZ’s Ag Inventory Methodology Tiers

Tier 1
Alpaca (D)
Goats (CS)
Horses (D)
Mules and asses (D)
Swine (CS, D)
Poultry (CS, D)
Direct N2O* (CS,D)
Indirect N2O* (CS,D)
Tier Increase % Change in Estimated Emissions
Tier 2 / 3 (CS)
Dairy cattle
Beef cattle
Sheep
Deer
Crops
Where CS = Country Specific and D = Default Examples of country specific values

Impact of country specific values on N2O inventory

NZ Agriculture Inventory Mitigation Option Estimates

• Continual improvement of inventory
estimates is required to account for new
farming techniques and mitigation
technologies
• Comprehensive process for incorporating
new science and technology into the
inventory methodology and emission
estimates
• Any significant inclusion requires peer-
reviewed published research and data
Improving the agriculture inventory

• Gaps in our inventory data; some years of missing data (extrapolate and
uncertainty). Other AD gaps limit tier 2.
• Data sharing issues; cross agency, data privacy regulations
• MfE as centralised inventory compiler: subject to their deadlines despite
ag. complexity
• Agriculture Inventory Model (AIM) Reprogram
• Providing information at the right level of complexity to inform policy is
also important, i.e. not too detailed or too aggregate.
MRV Challenges faced in New Zealand’s Agricuture
Inventory

Thank You!
Questions?