WELLINGTON: The manufacturing industry used around 157,000 terajoules of energy in 2014, down 8 percent from 2012, Statistics New Zealand said today. Manufacturing contributes approximately 11 percent of New Zealand’s GDP, and is a major exporting industry. The overall decrease in energy used in manufacturing was due to changes in the food, beverage, and tobacco manufacturing industry.
The manufacturing industry, as a whole, uses different types of energy for different purposes: electricity for lighting and heating, and petrol and diesel for transportation and operating other machinery.
“The manufacturing industry derived one-third of its total energy from electricity in 2014,” business performance senior manager Jason Attewell said. “However, coal is an important energy source in the food, beverage, and tobacco manufacturing industry, particularly for dairy product manufacturing. Dairy products made up one-fifth of New Zealand’s total export revenue in the year ended December 2014.”
“Increasing energy efficiency in the workplace was a medium or high priority for 70 percent of manufacturing businesses in 2014. Additionally, 77 percent of businesses had some form of energy management initiative in place. “The information we collect on energy use provides another way to understand the needs and profiles of some of our key industries,” Mr Attewell said.
Energy use figures are derived from the annual New Zealand Energy Use Survey. Other industries surveyed in the 2014 collection were the transport, postal, and warehousing industry; the public administration and safety industry; and the arts and recreation services industry.
