Fuel companies would have been required to add biofuels to their petrol starting next year under the Government's mandate, but the policy was scrapped this week as part of a policy "refocus" by new PM Chris Hipkins.
The policy would have reduced New Zealand's emissions by about one million tonnes in only a couple of years — a huge step towards meeting the country's climate goals.
But Hipkins said the policy was unfeasible because it would have driven up prices at the pump, and he's not the only one in Government who's backed away from it.
Climate Minister and Greens co-leader James Shaw told 1News that there are "real problems with biofuels."
"It's really hard to guarantee that biofuels would not come from deforestation or food production being swapped out for biofuel production."
Most of our biofuels would have been imported, and the climate policy would not necessarily have reduced overall emissions, according to some advocates.
"It creates all this extra demand for cropland and that leads to tropical deforestation around the world...It causes a disaster for the climate, for the rainforests and for the people who live there," Jake Roos from the Don't Burn Our Future campaign said.
"It would have created a lot of emissions happening overseas and it wouldn't have helped the climate. It would have made it worse, as well as driving up food and fuel prices."
But the Government was still eagerly promoting the policy as late as last November. At the time, Energy Minister Megan Woods supported the move - before it got burned - arguing that "biofuels have been used safely and effectively" around the world.
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