The Climate Emergency Response Fund

The ‘Climate Emergency Response Fund’ (CERF) was established in 2021. The fund was set up with an initial $4.5 billion balance for Aotearoa New Zealand’s climate spending, proportional to the size of proceeds from the Emissions Trading Scheme. The CERF was also topped up periodically by the previous Government at Economic and Fiscal Updates.

At Budget 2024, the Government closed the CERF, preferring instead to consider any new funding for climate-related initiatives as part of the normal Budget process. As part of Budget 2024 decisions, the Government agreed to retain funding for some initiatives that had previously been funded through the CERF.

CERF Monitoring and Reporting

Agencies that received CERF funding were required to provide regular monitoring and reporting updates to Treasury for publication. Initiative-level financial reporting was required on a quarterly basis and non-financial information was required annually.

This reporting has concluded at the end of the 2023/24 financial year, and the Treasury has published a final report on remaining CERF-funded initiatives. From now, these initiatives will be subject to the same monitoring and reporting requirements as general expenditure.

Summary of CERF baselined funding vs actual expenditure by year until closure in 2024

The links below contain the final CERF monitoring and reporting data. For each initiative the results show the actual spending for the year to date, alongside forecasts for the next three quarters. Spending is tracked against the baseline appropriation for each initiative and any material changes to that baseline are also indicated.

This data can be accessed in an open-source format, alongside a data dictionary: Climate Emergency Response Fund (CERF) Monitoring and Reporting Document Library