Tag: biofuel

Shaking the money tree

pine.gifNZ Incorporated has moved from a Kyoto deficit to a surplus, according to the 2009 Net Position Report [PDF] released today. A reduction in agricultural emissions due to the 2007/8 drought, and an upwards revision in forest carbon have produced an expected surplus of 9.6 million tonnes of carbon over the first Kyoto commitment period: 2008-12, worth $241 million at Treasury’s current carbon price of $25.

Announcing the figures, environment minister Nick Smith commented:

It is good news that we may exceed our Kyoto target but we need to be cautious of these projections given their volatility. It is difficult for the Government to make sound climate change policy when projections have ranged from a 55 million tonne surplus in 2002 to a 64 million tonne deficit in 2006 and when the figures over the past year have varied by 31 million tonnes equivalent to $787 million.

The volatility of the figures certainly doesn’t help the budget process, but has nothing whatsoever to do with making “sound climate change policy”. If you dig around a little in the FAQ [PDF], you find that the government’s only contribution so far has been to increase our liability as Section 2.3 on p2 points out:

Total energy and industrial emissions projections for 2008-2012 have not changed from the 2008 projection. There are reductions in the projected emissions from energy due to lower than projected energy demand during 2008, and the expected effects of a continued recession. However, these have been offset by the effects of removing the Biofuels Sales Obligation and the Renewables (Electricity) Preference, and a small increase in fugitive emissions from greater geothermal electricity generation.

The other fly in the ointment is that although the national carbon account may be positive, that does not necessarily mean that the government will avoid having to buy emissions unit on the international market. A key feature of the current ETS design is the “grandfathering” of heavy emitters by giving them allocations of free units to cover a large chunk of their emissions, and this could lead to the government having to buy units overseas, as Section 5 of the FAQ makes clear:

The net position is a simple balancing of New Zealand’s units assigned under the Kyoto Protocol (Assigned Amount Units (AAUs) and Forestry removal units) against our projected obligation under the protocol. ETS accounting considers how those units will be devolved domestically to participants, and balances up the flows of units from the Crown account. This means that under the net position New Zealand could have a surplus of units, but due to a generous allocation of units under the ETS, the Crown may still need to purchase units from overseas. The ETS accounting is a prediction of what units the Crown will receive from the sectors that have obligations under the ETS, and a prediction of allocation of units to sectors within the scheme. The two sets of accounting are very different as different sectors come into the ETS at different times, and have differing levels of allocation, while under the net position accounting, all of ‘New Zealand Inc.’s’ emissions are accounted for from 2008.

In other words, if the ETS Review proceeds with the expected softening up of the scheme for big emitters and agriculture, even if our national carbon account performs well the government could still end up shelling out taxpayer funds in subsidies to major corporates.
There’s a lot of material to plough through in the report, but here’s an interesting point that should make some of our farming advocates squirm: a chunk of the reduction in agricultural emissions — 4.1 mT, worth $100 million — comes from accounting for the use of nitrification inhibitors and emissions from urine and dung. So much for agriculture not being able to do anything to reduce emissions…
[Update: No Right Turn digs into the methodology changes behind the new figures, DPF at Kiwiblog posts an incredibly facile take on the issue, Business New Zealand want to use the new numbers as an excuse to do nothing (why am I not surprised?), while the Green Party want the government to commit to a 2020 target.]

[Youssou N’Dour & Peter Gabriel]

The other side of the world

Imagine this: the country’s leading business organisation — noted for its robust espousal of free markets and business freedom — takes the government to task for not doing enough, fast enough to get emissions on a downward path. So it releases four roadmaps, for the power, industrial, energy and transport sectors designed to deliver emissions reductions of 30% by 2020 (overview here). Fantastic, eh? Sadly, it’s not happening here. The organisation in question is the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). John Cridland, deputy director general of the CBI told Business Green:

“Achieving all of this in the ambitious timeframe that has been set will require massive investment of private capital, much of it from abroad,” he said. “But this will only be forthcoming if there is certainty about the direction of government policy, a robust price for carbon, a clear planning and regulatory structure, the right regime for tax and intellectual property, and the skills that will be needed to bring all this new kit to market.”

The contrast with the situation in Godzone could not be more stark. A couple of months ago, Carbon News reported on a draft of Business NZ‘s submission to the ETS Review committee:

New Zealand needs to stop ETS implementation until the rest of the world decides what it is doing, avoiding imposing an emission prices ahead of the rest of the world

We have the most “punitive” ETS in the world (all sectors and all-gases)

The Government will raise more revenue than needed to meet the actual cost of paying for any excess emissions commitment under Kyoto

The ETS is “rushed” (even though it has now been nearly 15 years since the Kyoto commitment was made and nothing major, except the ETS, has been done in response)

Agriculture will suffer if the ETS covers that sector’s gases before others in the world do so.

Couple that with the nonsense contained in the Business Roundtable’s ETS Review submission, and a clear picture emerges. The core of the New Zealand business world just doesn’t understand the climate problem — or have any real ideas for dealing with it. There are good guys in the business world — most notably the Business Council for Sustainable Development — but they struggle to be heard amongst the cacophony from the big emitters and their representatives.

Time for our business leaders to start living in the real world, not in some fantasy where their actions have no consequences, climate change is someone else’s problem, and taxpayers pay all their bills. But I’m not holding my breath.

[KT Tunstall]

Games without frontiers

ClimCity.jpg

Jeux sans frontières realised in Clim’ City, an interesting learning game with obvious antecedents from Bordeaux’s Cap Sciences centre: reorganise the energy sources and economy of this French city and its surroundings – from ski field to beach resort – to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without crippling the economy. According to the Technology Review story, it’s not easy to “win”, but if you don’t speak at least a little French it’s impossible… 😉

I hope one of the English-speaking science centres does a translation: I can see this being a great teaching tool. Now, do I create an association des citoyennes or go straight to shifting the centrale thermique to burning biomass, but that means expanding the forestry sector, and perhaps I should make sure that the forests are protected against forest fires, what with the warming in the pipeline…

[Peter Gabriel]

Coppiced willow farming here

This column appeared in the Waikato Times in August 2008.  I have altered some of the wording to update it for this Hot Topic post.

The change to renewable energy sources can seem daunting. Those with stakes in fossil fuels are often negative, claiming change will be too expensive, too difficult, or not yet necessary. Cries of economic doom have greeted even the modest emissions trading scheme which may or may not be carried forward by the new government.

It was encouraging therefore to read a few months ago of the plans of renewable energy company Pure Power to launch a variety of shrubby willow as a biofuel crop in New Zealand. Biofuels which use food crops or destroy rainforests have had a justifiably bad press. But not all biofuel crops are equal. Coppiced woody plants like the willow Pure Power plans to use have a very good ratio of energy output to the energy put into converting them; they can be grown on poorer soils not used for food production; they require little fertiliser or irrigation; using new technologies they will produce not only biofuel but also a range of products for making paints, resins, adhesives and bioplastics.  Pure Power will have nursery stock ready for planting this year and hopes for a rapid expansion of planting in subsequent years.

Continue reading “Coppiced willow farming here”

Swell maps, and other stories

GoogleBAS.jpg Time for another round up of climate-related news. Hot on the web today (for cartophiles, at least) is that Google Earth has gained a swag of new climate change related information, the result of collaboration between Google, the UK Government, the Met Office Hadley Centre and the British Antarctic Survey. The Climate Change in Our World project, launched at the Google Zeitgeist conference by UK PM Gordon Brown offers two new layers based on Hadley Centre predictions, BAS research in Antarctica, and impacts worldwide. You can animate global temperature changes, visit crumbling ice shelves, and view climate change impacts around the world. Google Earth blog here, download .kmz files here. Hours of geographical fun are guaranteed.

  • A major new study finds strong links between recent climate change and large scale changes in the planet’s natural systems. It’s our fault, in other words [Nature (behind a paywall), BBC, Science Daily News, Guardian]. Lead author Cynthia Rosenzweig from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York told the BBC “…look at all the effects this relatively low amount of warming has had. It reveals the sensitivity to relatively low amounts of warming in many physical and biological systems.” A key point for anyone who thinks that “only a few degrees” won’t make much difference.
  • The growing number of humans on the planet is having a dramatic impact on wildlife populations, according to the Living Planet Index compiled by WWF and the Zoological Society of London. Populations of land-based species have fallen by 25%, marine by 28% and freshwater by 29% since 1970. We’re losing about 1% of all other species every year, and one of the “great extinction episodes” in the Earth’s history is under way, the index finds. [BBC, Independent, Guardian, Telegraph].
  • More bad wildlife news: the 2008 Bird Red List “warns that long-term droughts and extreme weather puts additional stress on key habitats,” according to the BBC. “The assessment lists 1,226 species as threatened with extinction – one-in-eight of all bird species.“
  • RNZ National’s science programme Our Changing World is always worth a listen, but last week’s (15/5/08) was a cracker. Ice core expert Richard Alley on Antarctica’s future, an update on the University of Waikato’s UltraCommuter EV, and one of the most cogent overviews of biofuel options I’ve ever heard from Doug Cameron, Chief Scientific Officer of Khosla Ventures, the Californian clean tech company. If those streaming links expire, podcast versions are available here, and the programme’s archive is here.
  • Wired reports on Renault’s plans to make EVs for Israel, and then the world, and EcoGeek discovers that Audi intends to have EVs in production in ten years. They might have to hurry… (my son announced yesterday that “one day’ he intends to own a Porsche. I’m willing to bet that by the time he can afford one (if ever) it’ll be a hybrid or EV).
  • #35 with a bullet! Tim Selwyn’s latest NZ blogosphere survey (at Tumeke!) finds that Hot Topic has moved up from #68 in February to #35 in March/April. I’d like to thank The Listener for making it all possible… 😉