Tag: NZ

Domestic solar PV: practical for NZ?

This is a guest post by Jason Kemp of DialogCRM. It originally appeared at Jason’s blog last week, but I thought it deserved an airing here because it directly addresses many of the issues HT’s readers have been keen to discuss. With luck, this won’t be last time Jason’s work pops up at Hot Topic…

Many NZ consumers will be wondering if solar power for the home is a practical option. In simple terms despite New Zealand having mostly renewable energy our power costs to the home have continued to climb in the past few years despite low inflation. In real terms power costs have pretty much doubled for me in the last 4 years and some of that is due to changing power use but most of it comes from cost increases made by the lines companies and the electricity retailers.

According to one source: Andrew Booth of Solar City re intelligent roof tiles

“The price of power in New Zealand is more than 70% higher than in Australia and the United States. There is very little point switching power companies in the face of such high prices. Homeowners would be far better off switching to solar.”

I suspect having an unprofitable aluminium smelter sucking up huge amounts of power at a huge discount and a government hell bent on selling shares in power companies ( that we already own – double dipping anyone?) complicates the math on why NZ power costs are extortionate but having high power costs should incentivise us to investigate alternatives – shouldn’t it? Continue reading “Domestic solar PV: practical for NZ?”

New Zealand’s double dealing and special pleading over Kyoto 2: part the first

Net emissions to 2020
The 2020 target and Net emissions to 2020

Is Tim Groser a Kyoto pariah? Or a Kyoto visonary? A global emissions reduction emissary or is he tar-sanded with a Canadian brush? I try to make sense of New Zealand’s double dealing and special pleading over the Kyoto Protocol second commitment period and the Doha climate change talks hooha.

I am very confused about New Zealand’s climate change policy since the Doha international climate change talks (COP18) and New Zealand’s announcement that it would opt out of a second period of the Kyoto Protocol back on 9 November 2012.

The Kyoto opt-out has been described as a shambles and a disgrace and as a lose-lose decision that shuts New Zealand out of the international carbon markets. Tim Groser’s Herald Op Ed today just confuses me more.

So I have a question for all Hot Topic readers.

If Minister of Climate Change Tim Groser is serious about New Zealand’s 2020 greenhouse gas target, why would he forego formally lodging the 2020 target into the existing Kyoto Protocol framework (where the national institutions and arrangements are already up and running), in favour of pledging to meet the target on a voluntary basis in terms of a yet to be negotiated treaty?

Continue reading “New Zealand’s double dealing and special pleading over Kyoto 2: part the first”

NZ’s climate policy omnishambles – gerry brownlee’s anti-carbon tax

Gerry Brownlee, formerly a minister of energy and fossil fuel, and currently the Minister for Transport and for bulldozing democracy, heritage and social order in Christchurch, today announced that petrol duty will be increasing by 3 cents a litre annually for the next 3 years to fund new roads.

Specifically mentioned are the Rangiriri and Tamahere-Cambridge sections of the Waikato Expressway, the Mackays to Peka Peka section of the Wellington Northern Corridor and the four-laning of the Groynes to Sawyers Arms (Johns Road) section of the Western Corridor in Christchurch.

The reason given for this policy is that the funding is needed for the Roads of National Significance programme and some upper North Island transport projects. I guess that means more spaghetti motorway in Auckland.

This is crazy policy.

The first level of craziness of the petrol duty hike is that it will affect the benefit-cost analysis (BCA) of each Roads of National Significance (RONS) project. Projects like Transmission Gully Expressway, have already been justified to hearings before the Environment Protection Authority on very marginal benefit/cost ratios. Julie-Anne Genter of the Greens said the benefit/cost ratio of Transmission Gully was 0.6. The RONS don’t even break even in BCA terms.

Now with the added petrol duty, the marginal benefit/cost ratio would be even worse. However, I bet that won’t make Gerry Brownlee or Steven Joyce any less obsessed with them.

The second level of craziness with the petrol duty increase is the Government’s complete failure to understand carbon pricing (which is what a petrol duty is) and to anchor their transport, energy and infrastructure policy with effective carbon pricing.

I have no problem with the price of petrol or diesel increasing. Road transport has many externalities that are not priced. It is “elephant in the room” obvious that the most important unpriced externality of liquid fossil fuels is global warming. And not a lack of four-lane expressways.

“But we have an emissions trading scheme!” I hear some one say. “Surely, road transport fuels are included in the NZETS?”

Yes we sort of have an emissions trading scheme which includes liquid fossil fuels which sort of prices carbon. But NZ carbon prices have crashed 72% in 2012.

According to estimates by the Energy and Data part of Steven Joyce’s mega-ministry MoBIE, in the three months ended on 30 September 2012, the NZ emissions trading scheme probably accounted for 0.93 cents out of the regular petrol price of $2.09 per litre.

So we may describe New Zealand’s petrol pricing policy as having two mutually conflicting parts. The price includes a component for revenue gathering for unneeded four-lane RONS expressways (3 cents/litre). The price also includes a component for the NZETS carbon price (0.93 cents/litre).

And the four-lane expressways part exceeds the carbon-pricing ETS part by a factor of 3.

This is the complete opposite of effective carbon pricing. Brownlees’s petrol duty, to coin an expression, is an anti-carbon tax. What a shambles!

NZ climate policy shambles, and other summer reading

It’s summer down south, and New Zealand’s politicians have embarked on their summer break. It’s summer in Waipara too, and with yesterday topping 30ºC and today heading in the same direction, your blogger has immediate climate concerns of an irrigation and vine management nature to attend to. So, with apologies for what may turn out to be less frequent posting over the next few weeks, here’s a quick round-up of stuff worth reading.

The NZ government will be relieved to be heading to the beaches after being battered by a hail of criticism for their climate policies over the last week. Brian Fallow, the NZ Herald‘s economics editor, was especially direct in his dissection of NZ’s climate policy settings post-Doha:

The Government’s climate change policy is a shambles and a disgrace. Unless, that is, you are happy for the costs of the inevitable adjustment to a low-carbon future to be needlessly increased and pushed onto the young, in which case it is doing a great job.

Gareth Morgan joined in, calling for the government to come clean about what its policies really mean:

Continue reading “NZ climate policy shambles, and other summer reading”

The Doha Gateway: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair

Where we are, where we should be and the consequences. Climate Action Tracker’s graphic on our future choices.

And so. Another set of climate talks done, this year dusted with Doha sand and labeled the “Doha Gateway”.  I’m not sure what they’re a gateway to,  certainly no immediate improvement to the climate. The final hours were bizarre, to say the least.  We began the day on Saturday with a text much improved from the day before, but with some major issues outstanding.  Ministers wrangled behind closed doors for most of the day, changing bits of text here and there.

We were preparing for Russia who, with Kazakhstan, Belarus and the Ukraine, were set to continue the talks way into Saturday night.   They were holding out in the informals, furious about the discussions on hot air.

Hot air

The “Russian factor” is one those of us who’ve been involved for a few years are all too familiar with. Just when you think there’s general agreement, in come the Russians who manage to drag the talks on for hours.

“Hot air” has been major problem with the Kyoto Protocol for years.  Somehow, the Russians managed to get the Kyoto negotiators to agree to a baseline of 1990, before the collapse of the former Soviet Union, which meant millions of tonnes of carbon credits ended up in the hands of Eastern European countries, bringing them a handy income, and other countries an easy and cheap option to do nothing at home and buy cheap hot air.  Russia has 6Gt of hot air – that’s how much it’s been cheating the atmosphere.

In Durban and Doha, New Zealand has sided with this team against the wish of the rest of the world to make sure that this “hot air” didn’t get carried over into Kyoto’s second commitment period (CP2).

Continue reading “The Doha Gateway: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair”