About

The Climate Action Ledger is an evidence-based record of what New Zealand’s governing parties have done on climate - so voters can see the track record behind the rhetoric.

Why this exists

Climate policy shapes electricity bills, land use, industry, and the risks communities face from extreme weather. Over election cycles, parties make big claims about their climate credentials - but what they actually did while in power is easier to forget than what they said on the campaign trail.

This site pulls governing-party climate actions since 2014-present into one open ledger: each entry is scored, sourced, and attributed to the parties responsible. The aim is impartial, defendable information that helps Kiwis compare recent track records and make more informed voting decisions.

We focus on decisions made in office, not opposition speeches. Scores summarise climate impact as best we can on a clear −2 to +2 scale; the underlying sources are always linked so you can read the evidence yourself.

Methodology

How we decide what counts, how actions are scored, and how party scorecards are built.

Why 2014-present

The ledger covers governing-party climate actions from September 2014 to today. That window spans two National-led and two Labour-led periods - roughly six years under each major party’s leadership - so recent track records can be compared on a similar footing. It is also a particularly active stretch for New Zealand climate regulation: emissions pricing, carbon budgets, adaptation planning, and energy and transport decisions all intensified in this era, and many of those choices are still shaping policy now.

Impact scale

Each action receives a numeric score from −2 to +2. The score provides a general indication of the benefit, or damage, the action is expected to have on long-term climate outcomes.

+2
Major positive
Large durable emissions reduction or governance/adaptation strengthening
+1
Moderate positive
Clear net benefit; limited scale/duration/enforcement
0
Neutral/mixed
Negligible, offsetting, or too uncertain
-1
Moderate negative
Meaningful delay, weakening, or undermining
-2
Major negative
Large rollback, lock-in, or institutional damage

This simple scoring method was chosen because it is intuitive and provides a level of quantisation that most experts can agree on (i.e. was the action positive or negative for climate, and is the impact likely to be moderate or major).

What gets included

Each ledger entry is one discrete climate action - a specific decision or event, not a whole programme summarised in one vague line. To be included, an action should meet all of the following:

Climate relevance - a non-trivial effect on mitigation, adaptation, or the institutions that govern climate policy.
Verifiability - at least one primary source (for example legislation, Gazette notice, or official release) or an authoritative secondary source that can be checked.
Governing connection - it happened while the attributed party held a governing role, or it is a direct implementation or reversal of such a decision.
Significance - at least one of: structural policy change; material public spending (around $10m or more); a decision in an emissions-sensitive sector; long-term lock-in; or use of an explicit climate policy instrument.

What we leave out

We do not score opposition speeches, campaign promises, or purely symbolic statements with no governing effect. Actions outside the 2014-present analysis window are out of scope, except where brief context helps explain an in-window decision. Parties that have not held governing or policy-steering roles in this period are omitted from the party list for now - there is no comparable governing record to score (see the Parties page).

How attribution works

Each action is attributed to the party or parties responsible for making or driving the decision at the time. Attribution is not always a single party name:

Sole - one party clearly owned the decision.
Primary - one party led, with limited involvement from others.
Shared - responsibility was genuinely joint (common in coalitions).
Support-only - a partner enabled the decision without leading it.

Where responsibility is shared, the action can count toward more than one party’s scorecard. Every attribution includes a short rationale so the choice can be scrutinised.

How scores are judged

Reviewers assign an integer score from −2 to +2 for each action, using the Impact scale above. Close calls are expected - the scale is deliberately coarse so scores stay explainable rather than falsely precise. Party totals and per-year averages can be fractional because they are sums and averages of those integer scores.

How the scorecards are built

Homepage and party scorecards sum the impact scores of included actions for each attributed party. A small number of rows may be excluded from aggregates where counting them would double-count the same decision. Shared coalition actions contribute to each attributed party. The optional Normalise by years in office view divides each party’s total by their years in governing roles during the 2014-present window, so longer and shorter spells in office can be compared more fairly.

Review process

Actions move from draft to reviewing to approved before they are treated as final. Every entry links to its sources so you can read the underlying evidence. Methods and scores are meant to be critical and defensible.

Feedback

We welcome constructive feedback, including questions and corrections. If something looks wrong, incomplete, or unclear, please get in touch at info@carboncritical.org.

Who built this

Carbon Critical is an independent non-profit R&D lab based in Auckland, New Zealand. We use maths, software, and data science to build digital tools and solutions that support a cleaner and better future.

This website is part of that work - turning messy public records into something citizens can use to make informed voting decisions. Check out our website to find out what else we are working on.

Carbon Critical also runs the Net Zero Fund, supporting global charities working on climate solutions.