Category: Climate business

New energy and energy efficiency strategies announced

Wp-Content Uploads 2007 08 WindturbineRenewables are the key to New Zealand’s future energy needs, according to the government’s new energy strategy, published today [HTML, PDF]. No new thermal generation should be built over the next ten years, the government is going tell the power generation and distribution state owned enterprises. New generation capacity is expected to come from an expansion of wind and geothermal generation. The energy strategy is complemented by the new energy efficiency and conservation strategy (EECS) [web, PDF], designed to help homes, businesses and transport reduce their energy use.
Announcing the energy strategy, David Parker said (Scoop audio):

The government does not believe it is in the interests of the country for the SOEs to build any more base-load thermal generation. The government will be writing to the SOE generators to make it clear that it expects them to follow this guidance. We are also considering additional measures to ensure our message is loud and clear, for all generators, not just SOEs. Competitive neutrality between the private sector and SOEs is important.

In the transport sector, the government wants to encourage biofuels, greater fuel efficiency, and low-carbon vehicles. It foresees as much as 60% of the light vehicle fleet being electric powered by 2050. The strategy also call for the development of a domestic sea freight strategy, looking to build an integrated rail/sea freight system to reduce reliance on roads. [“Key points” press release]

In her speech launching the EECS, Jeanette Fitzsimmons said:

“This is an action plan to make a real difference to Kiwi families so that they can live in warmer, drier, healthier homes that cost less to heat; for business to become more competitive; and to save money and emissions in the transport sector. The strategy is set to deliver annual non-transport energy savings of 30 PetaJoules per year by 2025. That’s the same as the electricity used by 30 cities the size of Nelson in 2006 or 18 months of coal-fired production from Huntly, at 2006 levels. In transport, cumulative savings by 2025 will be around 4.8 billion litres of fuel.”

All good stuff, but someone should tell her officials that a PetaJoule is a bit more than 1015 Joules – as defined at the back of the strategy document. That should be 10 to the power of 15, a thousand trillion joules, or 1,000,000,000,000,000 joules. Either that, or Nelson is the most energy efficient town in the known universe. Mike Ward clearly doesn’t need to be mayor…

Reaction so far seems mainly positive. More from me when I’ve had a chance to read the strategy documents in detail.

Clearing the decks

A few quick links before I post on the government’s just announced energy strategy: cleaning out the tabs in my web browser…

  • Professor Graham Harris of the University of Tasmania addresses the issues I raised in my “ecological overdraft” post a few days ago, in Sleepwalking Into Danger – an article for ScienceAlert: “It is time to admit how little we know and face the risks of planetary degradation – this goes way beyond climate change. Biodiversity isn’t just birds, primates and whales; it is planetary function and resilience.”
  • The Royal Society For The Protection Of Birds is planning [Guardian, BBC] to allow the sea to reclaim 728 hectares of coastal land in the Essex marshes on Britain’s east coast to restore habitat for wildlife – and as a pragmatic adaptation to rising sea levels. Could we see the same sort of thing here?
  • The Andrill project – a sea floor drilling effort under the Ross Ice Shelf involving NZ and US scientists – is using nifty Apple computers, so Apple has posted an interesting perspective on the work being done. New drilling season starts soon.
  • Brian Fallow in the Herald takes a look at the cost of carbon in the new ETS and speculates about ongoing impacts on the government’s accounts.
  • Carbon emissions from shipping may be much higher than previously thought, according to The Independent (UK).
  • German solar power company Conergy is planning a 500 turbine windfarm near Broken Hill in New South Wales. Meanwhile, BusinessWeek (US) profiles entrepreneur John O’Donnell, who has bought into Aussie scientist David Mills solar thermal designs, and plans to build a lot of generation at costs competitive with coal. With Silicon Valley money, and soon.
  • The Dominion Post digs up some advice to government on dealing with “environmental refugees”. NZ will probably want to help small Pacific nations, but refugees from the Asian megadeltas might be another matter.

Emissions Trading Scheme workshop: final thoughts

Wp-Content Uploads 2007 09 Nzets1-3Two thought provoking days, and a crash course in carbon trading (and carbon trading politics), leaves me with a few key comments (and many more questions). There’s lots of devil in the detail in the documents (which are many, and often thick) – but these are my headlines.

Continue reading “Emissions Trading Scheme workshop: final thoughts”

ETS workshop: day 2 – the trees strike back

Wp-Content Uploads 2007 09 Nzets1-2OK, perhaps I was exaggerating about foresters being happy. On day two of the government’s Emissions Trading Workshop in Christchurch last Friday the policy on pre-1990 forests was described as “blatant property theft

ETS workshop: day 1

Wp-Content Uploads 2007 09 Nzets1-1Just a note: enjoyable is perhaps not the best word for a day going through the detail of the framework for the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), but it was certainly useful to have officials walk us through the design of the new system, and just as intriguing to gauge the response from the floor. To a first approximation, foresters happy, big emitters less so. Two key points. The ETS is clearly intended as a stepping stone to a long term system for post-Kyoto operation, but in the absence of any concrete guidance on where the world is going to go, much of the detail remains to be worked on. There are “2007 decisions