Category: Climate business

Sunday burnouts in Christchurch: electric motorsport comes to NZ

New Zealand is going to get its first taste of electric motorsport this Sunday, when the Mike Pero Motorsport Park at Ruapuna near Christchurch is hosting EVolocity, an amazing line-up of electric racing machines and their creators — including the world’s fastest woman on a motorcycle, Eva Håkansson and her creation the KillaJoule, recently clocked at Bonneville Salt Flats in the USA at 389 km/h. With her will be her husband, Bill Dubé, with his electric drag bike the KillaCycle, which takes under 1 second to accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h. Also on show will be the first Tesla S to make its way to NZ.

Event highlights will include:

  • A race between the world’s top electric vehicles.
  • A race between 15 Canterbury schools who have developed their own custom design and built electric vehicles
  • A showcase of three world record holding electric vehicles from the US, plus New Zealand’s first Tesla S (The highest performance electric vehicle commercially available).
  • Electric bike acrobatics display featuring freestyle motocross star Luke Smith of Nitro Circus fame
  • NZ’s largest ever parade of electric bikes
  • Standing ¼ mile drag competitions: Killacycle, Tesla vs Ferrari, electric Falcon Ute vs XR8 Ute, combustion motor bikes vs electric motor bikes, lots more)
  • Kevin Clemens who set 11 world, US National and US East Coast land speed records with electric motorcycles built in his Minnesota workshop.

Tickets are $20 online/$25 at the gate, and the day gets underway at 9am. Should be an exciting day for anyone who loves motorsport, and who wants to see the future. Going fossil-fuel free means going faster…

Carbon News 24/11/14: penny-pinching on climate funding

Govt slammed for weak climate fund contribution


The Government is under fire for the size of its contribution to a global fund to help developing countries to combat climate change. New Zealand last week agreed to donate $3 million to the Green Climate Fund. That’s half the amount pledged by Luxembourg and the Czech Republic, and 3 per cent of what’s been promised by South Korea, the Netherlands, Finland and Denmark.

Climate change a little too far down Labour’s list


By CN editor Adelia Hallett: New Labour Party leader Andrew Little appears to rank climate change only slightly more importantly than does Prime Minister John Key. Little, elected as leader last week, announced his shadow cabinet today. The climate change and environment portfolios have gone to relatively low-profile MP Megan Woods, who is ranked 13th in the line-up, and outside the front bench.

New shadow minister eyes climate change priorities


Labour’s new climate change and environment spokesperson says there’s never been a time when she didn’t believe in climate change.

Yealands wins sustainability award


Yealands Family Wines took the top prize in this year’s Sustainable Business Network Awards. Continue reading “Carbon News 24/11/14: penny-pinching on climate funding”

Carbon News 17/11/14: G20 climate action

Minister knows of water woes, but public information tap is turned off

Finance Minister Bill English has been told something about fresh water — but the public isn’t allowed to know what it is. Last month, Ministry for the Environment officials were forced to admit they were wrong to say that the quality of our waterways is “stable or improving”.

Deal or no deal — can China and the US deliver?

It’s been called an historic agreement — a game changer in the battle to combat climate change. But can China and the US fulfil the promises in their announcement of plans to cut carbon emissions?

Does this climate deal let China do nothing for 16 years?

“As I read the agreement it requires the Chinese to do nothing at all for 16 years while these carbon emissions regulations are creating havoc in my state and around the country.” — US Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, November 12, 2014.

Crowd-funders get behind CarbonScape

Kiwi cleantech company CarbonScape has hit its crowd-funding equity target. Continue reading “Carbon News 17/11/14: G20 climate action”

China and US reach emissions deal, NZ govt warned its policies are failing

Today’s news that the US and China have agreed a long term policy to reduce carbon emissions is being hailed as a “game-changer” in international climate negotiations. China has agreed to cap its emissions in 2030 — the first time it has committed to anything more than a reduction in the carbon intensity of its emissions, while the US will aim to cut emissions by 26-28% on 2005 levels by 2025, up from its current target of 17% by 2020. [BBC, Guardian, Climate Progress.] Meanwhile, NZ’s third term National government is being warned by its own civil servants that its current emissions policy settings commit the country to substantial emissions increases over the same time frame.

With the world’s two largest emitters — between them they account for 45% of total emissions — agreeing to work together for the first time, prospects for a global deal in Paris next year look brighter than before. However, the cuts on the table do not look like enough to keep the planet on a trajectory to 2 degrees of warming or less. Associate professor Peter Christoff of the University of Melbourne explains (via The Conversation):

These commitments will frame the levels of ambition required of other states at Paris next year. Climate modellers will no doubt now be rushing to determine what these new commitments, if delivered successfully, will mean for combating global warming.

The US and Chinese cuts, significant though they are, will not be enough to limit the total increase in the atmospheric carbon dioxide unless other states engage in truly radical reductions.

In other words, global emissions are likely to continue to grow, probably until 2030, which will make it impossible to hold global warming below the world’s agreed limit of 2ºC above pre-industrial levels.

In New Zealand the briefings for incoming ministers in the new government — same as the old lot, in climate relevant ministries — have been remarkably blunt in their assessment of the task the country faces. Continue reading “China and US reach emissions deal, NZ govt warned its policies are failing”

Waking the Frog

Canadian Tom Rand is an enthusiastic promoter of the clean technologies which are fully capable of saving us from the worst ravages of climate change. He’s also an investor in the field – a capitalist, he happily acknowledges. And importantly for his readers he’s a lively and thoughtful writer with a knack for striking observation. Waking the Frog: Solutions for our Climate Change Paralysis [Amazon] is partly an attempt to understand why we have stepped back from what looked in the early 1990s like a promising start to rein in greenhouse gas emissions. It is also an affirmation that we have the means to move rapidly away from fossil fuels if we have the will.

Rand hopes that the fact that he is a capitalist operating within the system he critiques will lend credibility to his criticisms.

“I’m not an outsider looking in but an insider looking ahead.“

Continue reading “Waking the Frog”