Category: Climate business

Why (and how) cheaper solar power, batteries, electric and autonomous vehicles are going to change our world over the next 5 years

This will be the best hour you’ll spend in front of a screen this week, I promise. Tony Seba explains how the plunging costs of battery storage and solar power generation, coupled with the rise of electric vehicles and autonomous driving technologies are going to first disrupt and then transform both the transport and power industries worldwide, and very, very soon. Watch this, and then ask yourself why this isn’t being reflected in the policy discussion in this NZ election. Why are we not encouraging rooftop solar? Why are we still building motorways? Drilling for oil? The timeline on this stuff falls within the lifetime of the next parliament!

Shamelessly lifted from Peter at Climate Crocks. Thanks for the lead, Peter, you just delayed my Sunday work programme by an hour!

Hiatus to end soon

Not that hiatus. That never happened in the first place. No, the hiatus in posts here at Hot Topic.

It’s three months since Jim Renwick’s demolition of Guy McPherson’s enthusiastic doom-mongering, and I have been remiss in not following up with more topical observations. It’s not as though there’s any shortage of stuff to write about. I shall have more to say soon — not least because the end of April will mark the 10th anniversary of this little climate blog — but in the meantime, please talk amongst yourselves…

Is it in the spirit of the Paris Agreement to ratify it with more emissions and more creative accounting?

Is the New Zealand Government’s plan to ratify the Paris Agreement in 2016 consistent with a two degrees Celsius (2C) carbon budget?

Since the December 2015 Paris Agreement, the British climate scientist Kevin Anderson has given a couple of talks with the title Beyond Dangerous Climate Change: Does Paris Lock-out 2 Degrees?

Anderson’s message is that although the Paris Agreement was a diplomatic triumph, it relies on speculative utopian technological fixes (bio-energy carbon capture and storage) in the future in order to reconcile the now extremely limited carbon budgets consistent with the desired 2C (and 1.5C) temperature limits with business-as-usual economics and politics. In other words, the Paris Agreement locks out the 2C target.

Why do I mention that? Because I want to run a ‘Kevin Anderson’ ruler over the New Zealand Government’s recently announced ratification of the Paris Agreement. To conduct a bare assessment of New Zealand’s emissions taking account that it is the cumulative emissions that determine warming. I want to ask the question ‘does the New Zealand ratification also lock out any policies for emissions reductions consistent with a fair share of a 2 degrees Celsius carbon budget?’

Continue reading “Is it in the spirit of the Paris Agreement to ratify it with more emissions and more creative accounting?”

Moro bars and triple dips: Geoff Simmons fact checks Paula Bennett’s clean unit claim

Geoff Simmons
Geoff Simmons

Geoff Simmons of the Morgan Foundation tells a good story about dodgy uncle Trev, fake bank notes and real moro bars while he fact-checks Paula Bennett on the integrity of the surplus emission units. It’s a real triple-dip!

The Morgan Foundation’s Geoff Simmons has done a whiteboard Friday video on Minister for Climate Change Issues Paula Bennett’s claim that the surplus emission units are not tainted by the 97 million fake Russian and Ukrainian emission reduction units that the Climate Cheats report of April 2016 showed had been handed to the Government under the NZ emissions trading scheme.

Paula Bennett
Paula Bennett

Geoff explains the issue very well and has the numbers right. More than that, I think Geoff should get the Joe Romm language intelligence award for using a great metaphor for New Zealand’s unethical use of the ‘hot air’ Ukrainian and Russian emission reduction units. Continue reading “Moro bars and triple dips: Geoff Simmons fact checks Paula Bennett’s clean unit claim”

Helter smelter deja vu: Tiwai Point uncertainty stalls NZ renewables

Huntly thermal power station c/- Wikimedia CommonsSimon Johnson looks at how New Zealand Aluminium Smelter Limited is behind the Meridian/Genesis deal keeping the Huntly Thermal Power Station burning coal as the threat of closing the Tiwai Point smelter is stalling the construction of consented renewable energy projects.

My last post at Hot Topic was about energy companies Meridian and Genesis doing a deal to keep the Huntly Thermal Power Station open (and burning coal) for an extra four years.

My post really just noted how backwards the decision was in terms of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. And that the expected shut-down of Huntly represented the only predicted drop in energy emissions New Zealand had advised to the UNFCCC. And that reduction has just gone up in smoke.

However, New Zealand Aluminium Smelters Limited and the Tiwai Point smelter have a malignant background role in the Huntly deal.

Meridian Energy said the deal was necessary to provide security of energy supply if the hydro lakes are low. That is only the case if the next ‘cab off the rank’ of renewable energy capacity is not built to replace Huntly. The generators don’t want to build any new renewable capacity if the smelter closes and Meridian then releases cheaper Manapouri hydro electricity onto the grid.

Hence helter smelter deja vu all over again.

Continue reading “Helter smelter deja vu: Tiwai Point uncertainty stalls NZ renewables”