Climate politics – Page 53

Turn down the heat: even bankers know a bad thing when they see it (sometimes)

Here’s Jim Yong Kim, head honcho at the World Bank, writing in the Guardian to mark the launch of a new report on climate change commissioned by the bank:

The question about climate change is no longer whether it is real. The question is what the world is going to look like for our children as they grow up. I have a three-year-old son, and, when he is my age, he could be living in a world that is completely different from ours, largely because of climate change.

Thanks for that wisdom, Mr Jim. I have a 25-year-old son, and I am certain that when he is my age, he will be living in a world that is hugely different to ours because of rampant climate change. If it’s a world that still has the luxury of world bankers, we (or at least bankers) will be doing well. For most, however, that will not be the case.

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Grand final: Sustainable Energy NZ #16 – counting up the dollars and sense

Welcome to the sixteenth and final post in the Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air – A New Zealand Perspective series.

To recap, we started with a bit of energy accounting and worked out that Kiwi’s use around 88 kWh/d/p (methodology for what the kWh/d/p means is here), and that of this, about 33kWh/d/p came from sustainable sources or we couldn’t substitute. As a result, we’ve been looking for how to shift the remaining 55kWh/d/p of our current energy use to renewable energy sources. We approached this in two ways:

How much could we increase our energy generation capacity in renewable sources?

Here, we looked at hydro power, geothermal and wind (and a summary on the big three), solar, biofuels, marine and waste energy and did some basic calculations on the overall potential of these sources. Then:

How much could we achieve a BIG reduction in our personal and national energy consumption, and where those savings would come from.

We went through the areas of energy use for Kiwis, including road, air transport, home energy use and general consumption before doing some calculations on the overall reductions we think we could make.

What might it cost to achieve an all-renewable energy economy?

Today, we’re looking at how this might translate into action at a national level. This post contains both some costing, and suggestions for action that might effectively be channeled into effective change.

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Seven keys to green growth in NZ: Pure Advantage’s new economic analysis

Last week business lobby group Pure Advantage launched [Herald, Stuff] a specially commissioned report, Green Growth: Opportunities for New Zealand, which presents, they say, “an exhaustive, objective economic argument for embracing green growth”. The report was produced by a London-based economics consultancy in conjunction with the University of Auckland Business School, and is the culmination of two years work to identify the most effective ways of implementing green growth business strategies in NZ.

Launching the report, Pure Advantage (PA) chairman Rob Morrison said:

We firmly believe on the basis of this significant macroeconomic report that New Zealand has the potential to generate billions of dollars in new high-value economic growth, whilst at the same time improving New Zealand’s environmental performance.

Morrison said that PA intends to use the report as “a basis to establish, in consultation with industry, seven industry-specific green growth programmes”. The seven key ‘advantages’ are (links go to PA web explanations):

Home Advantage: Retrofitting an efficient building environment;
Geothermal Advantage: Creating a significant geothermal export industry
Agricultural Advantage:
Investing in sustainable and efficient agricultural technologies
Waste-to-Energy Advantage: Installing bio-energy and waste-to-energy infrastructure
Biofuel Advantage: Establishing a woody mass biofuel and bio-products industry
Smart Grid Advantage: Installing the building blocks of a smart grid
Biodiversity Advantage: Establishing a world-class biodiversity driven ecotourism and conservation education programme.

PA note that the report was “not driven by environmental idealism or fear of climate change”, yet the recommendations look a lot like the sort of joined up thinking on environment and emissions policy that has been so lacking from the present government. By making the business case for green growth, perhaps PA can start a bottom-up change of economic direction that will do for NZ what the government will not. It’s certainly a worthwhile effort, but while there are other lobby groups out there promoting rampant population growth as the way to stop economic decline, it will continue to be an uphill struggle.

Norwegian Wood (this exporter has flown)

The Mighty River Power 100MW geothermal power plant at Tasman Mill, Kawerau, NZ Norwegian wood and newsprint transnational Norske Skog Tasman (NZ) Ltd ‘exports itself’. Simon Johnson aka Mr February looks at the flight of another manufacturer and CO₂ emitter and exporter as it lays off staff and reduces production. Wasn’t the very generous free allocation of units in the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme meant to keep exporters like Norske Skog Tasman in New Zealand? Or have we just removed the price signal from exporters for no valid reason and stuffed the NZETS?

The Herald reports that the Norwegian-owned newsprint-maker and transnational Norske Skog Tasman NZ has joined the ranks of export businesses like Rio Tinto Alcan NZ/NZ Aluminium Smelters who are exporting jobs off shore. Incidentally Rio Tinto Alcan NZ/NZ Aluminium Smelters have just been described as New Zealand’s biggest bludger.

Norske Skog is shutting down one of two newsprint machines at the Tasman Mill, in Kawerau, due to lowered demand for newsprint.

At the same time Norske Skog is investing $A84 million in new plant at the existing Boyer Mill in Tasmania with some substantial help from the Australian Federal government (A$28 million grant) and State government (A$13 million loan).

The NZ Government has been asked “what is being done for jobs”? And the NZ Government’s “market will take care of everything” approach has been called naive.

The NZ Herald mentioned the NZ emissions trading scheme (NZETS) only briefly in passing, as they noted the rock-bottom NZ carbon price and the poor despairing carbon foresters.

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Sustainable Energy NZ #15: Keeping it lean and mean – a summary of energy use.

Welcome to the fiftheenth post in the Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air – A New Zealand Perspective series. After our previous posts on hydro power, geothermal and wind (and a summary on the big three), solar, biofuels, marine and waste energy, we’re now attempting to answer the question:

How can we achieve a BIG reduction in our personal and national energy consumption?

Remember, as before, the units are in kWh/day/person – ie. if you ran a 40W lightbulb for 24 hours, it’d take ~1 kWh over the space of a day. We then divide it by person to give you a sense of the scale of the resource proportionate to the size of the population. Be sure to check out the methodology. For reference – we’ve been looking to replace around 55 kWh/d/p of energy currently generated by fossil fuels. Be sure to check out our treatment on road, air transport, home energy use and general consumption from the last few days.

Summary of Energy Use

Using the MacKay categories (but ignoring imported goods and energy spent overseas on air travel), our total energy use of 88kWh/d/p breaks down as shown in Fig.3:

Fig.3 NZ Energy Use (by end use)

Continue reading “Sustainable Energy NZ #15: Keeping it lean and mean – a summary of energy use.”