Emissions profile

We have measured our city-wide emissions for 2018/2019 and 2021/22, which you can see below. These are the emissions of our entire city, and everyone in our community. It includes the emissions from the way we get around, the waste we produce from our homes and businesses, and the energy we use.

One of the biggest challenges we face in Hamilton is how fast we’re growing. More people in our city has led to our emissions increasing by 6% from 2018/19 to 2021/22, so we’re tasked with finding ways to reduce our emissions, even while our population grows.

Updating our city-wide emissions profiles

We are currently reviewing how frequently we measure our emissions, so that we can better understand how we’re tracking against the emissions targets set in our climate change strategy, Our Climate Future: Te Pae Tawhiti o Kirikiriroa.

We are also reviewing the data we use to calculate our emissions. For the 2018/19 and 2021/22 profiles we have used mostly national and regional data that is then scaled down to the Hamilton population. However, as emissions measurements have matured and data availability has changed, we are finding ways to improve our calculations.

Due to challenges with data used to calculate agriculture and forestry emissions for 2021/22, we have continued to use the amounts calculated for 2018/19 profile. Therefore, we have assumed that emissions from these sources have remained the same over time. This will be reviewed as we continue to measure the profile going forward.