Tag: NZ

The answer, my friend…

Some encouraging facts and figures are provided in an interview with the CEO of the European Wind Energy Association, Christian Kjaer, by Yale Environment 360. For the past two years 40 per cent of all new electricity generating capacity in Europe came from wind turbines. (Add solar and other renewables and that rises to 63 per cent.) From Spain to Sweden so many new turbines are being erected that Europe is on target to produce 15 per cent of its electricity from wind by 2020 and 50 per cent by 2050.

Kjaer puts the emergence of wind as Europe’s leading form of green energy down to a combination of government policies, entrepreneurial vision, and public support. Carrots and sticks are involved. The European Union provides tax credits, financial incentives, and priority access for renewable energy to the electricity grid to encourage the growth of wind, solar and other forms or renewables. The stick is the requirement that member states set renewable energy targets or face the possibility of being sued.

The result is that increasingly as plants fired by coal and natural gas reach the end of their lives they are being replaced by wind and solar power. The economic benefits of the transition are clear, with nearly 200,000 people currently employed in European wind power, rising to an estimated 450,000 by 2020. Kjaer has no doubt that green energy is an engine of job creation.

He thinks the early start that Europe gained in wind power, particularly in Spain and Germany and Denmark, gives them an advantage in the new industry and means they are reaping commercial benefits in terms of wind turbine manufacturing and activity further down the supply line. The high quality manufacturing sector, strongly supported by governments, should see Europe retaining an edge over the intensifying competition from Asian countries.  “The winners of tomorrow’s energy wars,” he says, “are going to be those who understand how to develop new technology, deploy new technology and get the benefits of exporting that technology to the rest of the world.”

He speaks of the need for Europe to make a serious effort in terms of changing the way they operate their grids, and to move more quickly to develop an offshore grid for utilizing the offshore wind energy. Politicians need to give attention to optimizing and expanding the grid infrastructure to accommodate a larger amount of variable wind power in the system, and also other renewables.

“One of the main reasons for the strong political support for a supergrid is also that we want to create an internal [European] market for electricity, which of course, in the end, should give consumers the most affordable electricity. That’s the whole idea about the internal market, is that it would create the free movement over borders of goods, services, and in this case electricity at the lowest cost. And in order to create an internal market for electricity you need the infrastructure, just as you need roads to move goods around the European Union.”

Concerning policies required for a robust industry Kjaer speaks first of stable long-term frameworks for investing in renewables. Stable frameworks help the European industry by contrast with the US where the framework is unable to be predicted more than one or two years ahead. This means the US is not reaping the job creation benefits of wind energy; a lot of manufacturing has to be imported since no one’s going to invest in a factory in the United States if they don’t know how the market looks beyond the next two years.

As an aside, a news item today reported US steelworkers complaining that in the manufacture of wind turbines and solar panels China is breaking WTO rules by an array of subsidies, tax credits, cut-rate loans, and other policies that give Chinese companies a strong competitive advantage over foreign firms. If Kjaer is right they might do better to complain of their own government’s failure to support green energy development ahead of the fossil fuel industry which is still favoured by extensive subsidies.

To return to Europe. Kjaer identifies three elements in the stable framework Europe is providing for renewable energy. Financial support such as tax credit is one. Access to the grid is another:

“And what European legislation does, it mandated all 27 member states to give priority access to wind energy, which means that if you have a wind farm and a gas plant, and they’re planned projects, the wind energy should be connected first. And also, if you have plants operating on the system, electricity from the renewables plant gets fed into the grid first.”

The third element is more straightforward administrative procedures. Kjaer spoke of hopes of streamlining what in some European countries are extremely tortuous permission processes.

Asked about public opposition to the expansion of wind turbines, he acknowledged it was an issue, more so in some countries than others. Onshore turbines in the UK are particularly difficult.

“But it’s my feeling that the concern from locals is biggest in the beginning of a new market taking off. So the first thousand megawatts are much more difficult to install than the next thousand megawatts. Because people get used to them, they understand that they don’t make noise anymore — the turbines twenty years ago made quite a lot of noise, today you can’t hear them, almost, if you’re more than two hundred meters away.”

Asked whether 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2050 was possible Kjaer explained why he thinks it is:

“Almost two-thirds of our new capacity is from renewables. That figure was about 20 per cent in the year 2000. So in nine years we’ve gone from 20 per cent to 62 — by 2020 of course we can get to 100 per cent of new capacity. And if we can get in 2020 to a situation where all new capacity is renewables, then we will, by definition almost, have 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2050 because all the other power plants will be taken off [line].”

Infrastructure is the absolute key:

“ – we need to build an infrastructure that is different. But, again, our infrastructure in Europe is aging – we haven’t been building power lines since the ‘60s or ‘70s. It needs to be replaced anyway. So we need to make sure that the infrastructure is changed in a way that it accommodates 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2050.”

While I was preparing this post a newsletter coincidentally arrived from the New Zealand Wind Energy Association, welcoming the Government’s continued commitment to its target of 90 per cent renewable electricity by 2025 in the draft New Zealand Energy Strategy and affirming the part that wind generation is able to play.

“In New Zealand, wind generation has increased 10-fold since 2003, helping lift total renewable generation to recent highs of over 70%. With four wind farms currently under construction, together with other new and planned renewable projects, New Zealand is making progress towards the 90% target and the rewards that it brings to the economy and the environment.”

It points to the economic advantage of globally competitive electricity prices that will accrue to New Zealand in the development of its ample renewable energy resources.

“Electricity prices have increased significantly in recent years on the back of rising natural gas prices. Increasing use of renewables such as wind energy, which has no fuel or carbon emissions costs, is helping to check these rising prices.”

There’s a note of understandable exasperation in a section of the newsletter addressing the misinformation barrier which it says is bizarrely making it easier to obtain resource consent for new thermal generation than for renewable generation.

Such misinformation as this:

“In the last few months we’ve seen claims that a proposed wind farm won’t generate the amount of electricity that the developer estimates because wind generation varies with the wind. Such claims overlook that developers’ calculations already take the variable nature of wind generation into account. Developers usually identify both the installed generating capacity of the project in megawatts (or MW) and the total amount of electricity that they expect the project to generate in a year in gigawatt-hours (GWh). This estimate of generation takes into account the wind conditions at the site and that varying wind conditions affect generation.”

The newsletter points out that wind is proving itself in New Zealand on its own merits. (I would add, in spite of the unfair advantages enjoyed by fossil fuels which are only just beginning to have a modest price put on them.) Unlike other countries, New Zealand wind farms are not subsidised. A wind farm will be built here only when it can generate electricity at a cost that is competitive with other forms of generation.

The NZ wind resource is very strong by comparison with other parts of the world where wind farms are being installed. Our wind farms generate almost twice as much electricity per installed megawatt of capacity as the international average.

In response to the claim that new thermal generation is required as back up for new wind farms the newsletter responds that our existing hydro base is sufficient to balance about 2000MW of wind capacity without adding significantly to the price of electricity. Current wind energy capacity sits just under 500MW, so there’s obviously some distance to go before back up becomes a serious concern.

It’s the view of the newsletter that the considerable range of research and practical experience available regarding wind energy after more than 10 years operation in NZ and more than 20 years overseas reveals that many of the claims commonly heard in denigration of wind energy do not stand up to scrutiny.

So, this evidence from Europe and New Zealand, along with that from the US and from China among others, demonstrates that in spite of all its detractors wind generation is advancing rapidly. It’s heartening to see that there are governments prepared to offer the financial and policy support that it needs. Some point sneeringly to that and utter the dirty word ‘subsidies’. In a market place which doesn’t price the environmental costs of fossil fuels there is currently no other way of putting renewables on an equal footing. In any case the imperative to phase out emissions means that we must pay what it costs to do so, just as, for example, we are preparing to pay the costs of repairing the earthquake damage in Canterbury. There are some expenditures which can’t be avoided. Would that our Draft Energy Strategy would recognise that.

Take a peek at Pukaki’s climate history

Irishmantreambasin.jpg

High in the Ben Ohau range to the west of Lake Pukaki in the South Island’s Mackenzie basin, the glacial moraines in the Irishman Stream Basin (Google Map) are providing important confirmation that the southern hemisphere warmed during a rapid northern hemisphere cooling event at the end of the last ice age. In a new paper in Nature, Glacier retreat in New Zealand during the Younger Dryas stadial Michael Kaplan and a team including three NZ scientists reconstruct the retreat of the glacier that used to fill the basin.

The team dated the sequence of moraines (piles of rock left by the retreating glacier) by measuring the “cosmogenic” beryllium isotope (10Be) in quartz crystals in the rocks — formed by bombardment by cosmic rays — giving a measure of how long the rocks have been exposed to the sky. By modelling the amount of ice in the valley at various moraine positions, they were able to reconstruct the glacier’s decline as the local climate warmed.

Why is this important? Because it’s another important bit of evidence in piecing together the sequence of events as the world warmed up from the last ice age — and in particular because the precise dating confirms that the Younger Dryas cold spell was not global in effect. From the abstract:

Our late-glacial glacier chronology matches climatic trends in Antarctica, Southern Ocean behaviour and variations in atmospheric CO2. The evidence points to a distinct warming of the southern mid-latitude atmosphere during the Younger Dryas and a close coupling between New Zealand’s cryosphere and southern high-latitude climate. These findings support the hypothesis that extensive winter sea ice and curtailed meridional ocean overturning in the North Atlantic led to a strong interhemispheric thermal gradient during late-glacial times, in turn leading to increased upwelling and CO2 release from the Southern Ocean, thereby triggering Southern Hemisphere warming during the northern Younger Dryas.

See also Science Daily. Ref: Kaplan et al. Glacier retreat in New Zealand during the Younger Dryas stadial. Nature (2010) vol. 467 (7312) pp. 194-197

[Edited to correct my original abysmal geography fail – wrong lake in the title]

The secret migration

Acouple of weeks ago, a comment on carbon footprints and immigration kicked off a brief exchange of views on New Zealand’s vulnerability to climate-forced migration. It’s an interesting subject, worth more attention, and so in this post I’m going to set out how I see NZ’s position in the context of the likely future flows of climate-forced migration.

Let’s start by defining the probable sources of migrants. The first and most obvious are refugees forced to move by climate impacts. The horrendous situation in Pakistan gives some idea of the sheer scale of the problems likely to be faced by some of the world’s most populous and least-wealthy countries. Here’s how the New York Times describes the situation in Pakistan:

Initial estimates for the scale of damages and human suffering for Pakistan’s worst flooding in 80 years, is larger than the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, 2005 Kashmir earthquake, 2008 Cyclone Nargis disaster in Burma and 2010 Haitian earthquake — combined.

Each of the great Asian megadeltas — in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and China — could face similar problems if the Asian monsoon intensifies further, or if sea level rise picks up pace. The potential for tens of millions of people to be made homeless, to start a desperate search for dry land and food is obvious — but that’s not where New Zealand’s principal vulnerability lies.

Continue reading “The secret migration”

When asses go to law

In a bizarre twist to the tale of New Zealand’s climate sceptics and their strange obsession with the minutiae of the history of temperature measurement in New Zealand, it now emerges that they have lodged papers with the High Court [Stuff & NZ Herald, via NZPA], seeking to have the court rule that the National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) should:

  • set aside NIWA’s decisions to rely upon its Seven Station Series (7SS) and Eleven Station Series (11SS), and to find the current NZTR [NZ temperature record] to be invalid
  • to prevent NIWA from using the current NZTR (or information originally derived from it) for the purpose of advice to any governmental authority or to the public
  • to require NIWA to produce a full and accurate NZTR [text from their press release]

The mind boggles. Just what is an “invalid temperature record”, and how on earth is a judge expected to rule on that? Given that NIWA has received funding to do a thorough re-working of the long-term temperature history of NZ, mainly as a result of the earlier kerfuffle, why are the cranks so keen to go to court now? Science is not done in law courts. Then there are questions to be asked about the organisation and funding of this legal effort, as well as questions about possible abuse of process and waste of taxpayer funds…

 

The genesis of this story goes back to November last year, when Richard Treadgold and the NZ Climate “Science” Coalition trumpeted the release of a “study” that showed (in Treadgold’s words):

We have discovered that the warming in New Zealand over the past 156 years was indeed man-made, but it had nothing to do with emissions of CO2 – it was created by man-made adjustments of the temperature. It’s a disgrace.

It was a shonky study, as I showed conclusively at the time, in what has proved to be the most widely-read Hot Topic post to date. NIWA’s response was to develop a new temperature series, using data from places where adjustments had either never been required or were very minor, and it demonstrated that warming was unequivocal — if anything slightly greater than in the original “seven station” series. Since then, Treadgold and the C”S”C have — with their friends in the far-right ACT Party — tried to turn the affair into a scandal, with no success. This latest legal ploy is a transparent attempt to get some more mileage out of what should, by all sensible measures, be the deadest of dead horses.

The case is being brought not by the NZ Climate Science Coalition or Climate Conversation Group, but by a newly-incorporated charitable trust, the New Zealand Climate Science Education Trust. The trustees are NZ CSC stalwarts Terry Dunleavy and Bryan Leyland, together with relative newcomer Doug Edmeades. An application for charitable status was made at the end of July and it was granted on August 10th. The Deed of Trust can be read at the Ministry of Economic Development’s Societies and Trusts Online site: search for “2539286 – NEW ZEALAND CLIMATE SCIENCE EDUCATION TRUST”. The stated aims of the trust (section four of the trust deed) look innocuous enough, but include a standard “do what you like” clause: 4.2.8: Such other activities and enterprises to further the charitable purposes of the Trust as the Trustees may decide. The documents sent to the press over the weekend can be read, in lightly edited form, at Treadgold’s blog.

It’s clear that Dunleavy, Leyland and Edmeades have some questions to answer. Their “charitable trust” was registered on August 10th, and within days they had lodged their legal action with the court. Was the trust formed specifically to bring the action? I understand that using a trust to bring a legal action provides some protection for the litigants if they lose their case and find costs awarded against them. But if that is the real reason for the trust’s existence, then surely it cannot be regarded as a charitable trust? Whatever the law may say — and I am sure that Dunleavy and co will have had legal advice (C”S”C chairman Barry Brill is a retired lawyer) — it cannot be morally or ethically acceptable for them to hide behind or misuse a charitable trust in this way. It also demonstrates rather nicely that they have no confidence that their case will succeed…

There are also questions to be asked about the funding of this legal effort to discredit NIWA and its scientists. Legal advice isn’t cheap, especially when seeking to bring a case before the High Court. The NZ C”S”C has always been rather coy about its funding, maintaining that it’s just a group of interested individuals who volunteer their efforts. Nevertheless, it has strong links with the US think tanks organising and funding campaigns against action to reduce carbon emissions, and has developed close ties with the Rodney Hide’s ACT Party — one of whose most generous supporters is climate sceptic and multi-millionaire Alan Gibbs. Of course, the NZ C”S”C might just have had a sausage sizzle outside a North Shore New World, and a bit of a whip round their membership, but on Radio NZ National’s Morning Report this morning [at 8:13am] Bryan Leyland admitted that Gibbs was “one of our friends”.

The question of funding is particularly important, because any reasonably objective assessment of their statement of claim shows it to be highly unlikely to succeed. The summary attached to the NZ C”S”C press release is pretty tedious, but it’s worth taking a look at the second paragraph:

The official NZ Temperature Record (NZTR) […] the historical base for most Government policy and judicial decisions relating to climate change, wholly relies upon a “Seven-station series” (7SS), adopted in 1999.

You don’t to need to read any further, to be honest, because this is sufficient to establish the statement of claim as nonsense. As I’ve said before, the NZ temperature record is interesting, fascinating even for those of a meteorological or climatological bent, but there is no such thing as an “official” temperature record that has formed any sort of “historical base for most government policy and judicial decisions relating to climate change”. No NZ government of any flavour has ever relied on NIWA’s temperature series for anything much, certainly not used it as the basis for any policy. NZ government policy in this area depends far more on the international scientific and diplomatic context than it does on the temperature in Hokitika in 1890.

So if the case is pretty much certain to fail, why go to the expense of bringing it in the first place? It’s a waste of good money, surely? Dunleavy et al, and their mysterious backers, clearly disagree — and the reason’s obvious. This is not about science, or improving the NZ temperature record, it’s about attention seeking. Having failed to get the government to delay the introduction of the ETS at the beginning of July, the C”S”C and its “friends” are getting desperate. Like spoilt children, they’re pouting and screaming and throwing toys out of the pram.

The results of this hissy fit are predictable. My guess is that the court will refuse to consider the case — which will give the CSC another excuse for a loud public whinge. Questions in Parliament by Hide and Boscawen? A racing certainty, I reckon. But much judicial time and public money will have been wasted in the process, and the NZ temperature record will continue to show what it always has and always will do — significant warming over the last 100 years. Meanwhile the world will continue to warm…

Farming’s future in NZ: adapt or decline

How will our land-based primary industries manage the climate changes ahead? That’s the question addressed by chapter 3 in Climate Change Adaptation in New Zealand (pdf download here). The general impression given is that they won’t fare too badly provided appropriate adaptive measures are taken. The chapter, contributed by a team of nine, reports on modelling examples from the three major areas of forestry, arable farming and pastoral farming. It’s apparent that there is a level of complexity to farming operations which is very difficult to embrace in any study and the writers make it clear that much ongoing research will need to be undertaken. I’ll pick out a few salient points from the paper.

 

So far as forestry is concerned productivity is likely to be affected by changed CO2 levels, rainfall and temperature. Fire danger will increase in most areas of New Zealand. Increased severe winds are also predicted in some parts of the country. Pests and fungal diseases are likely to be strongly affected and the impacts of weeds and fungal pathogens could change, as could the establishment and distribution of insect pests.

The forestry modelling reported was focused on two common fungal diseases which affect forest productivity. One of the two diseases responds positively to aerial applications of copper oxychloride, and there may need to be changes to the way these are made as risk areas are identified. Other adaptation options for both diseases might include developing disease resistant genotypes, changing the regimes to modify the within forest microclimate (especially air movement and humidity), changing the tree species totally on at risk sites, and possibly moving the forests to less risky sites as the climate changes.

Adaptation strategies in general will involve normal forest practices and, provided a good understanding of the changes needed is obtained, the study concludes we should be able to maintain the health and productivity of our forests.

Arable farming is likely to benefit from climate change, provided nutrients and water supply are not limited. (That  struck me as a big proviso.) The advantages result from a number of factors. One is the fertilising effect of increased CO2 . Another is the rise in temperature causing crops to grow faster, be harvested earlier, and leave more options for subsequent crops. A warmer drier spring means soil dry enough for earlier cultivation and sowing operations.  An extended frost free period enables frost-sensitive crops to extend their range. And so on. A model run of one crop showed a 16% increase in yield by 2090 under the high carbon scenario and a 3 week earlier harvest.

But the water and nutrient caveat is important, particularly as most cropping occurs on the east coast, which is expected to see more hot, dry weather. Irrigation systems will need to be efficient, and crops with a deeper root system may fare better.  For although climate change increases yield potential and management flexibility in systems that have good water availability, it does the opposite for dryland systems and those with limited irrigation.  The paper notes that there remains significant uncertainty around the impacts of climate change on water flows in the major alpine rivers which underpin the east coast irrigation water supply.

Pastoral farming, the biggest contributor to New Zealand’s agricultural exports, was approached through modelling a Manawatu dairy farm. It was modelled on a single mid-range climate change scenario. Two soil types were modelled, clay and sand. Pasture production increases, especially between 2000 and 2030, were predicted, particularly in late winter, spring and summer.  Potentially this is due to increased temperatures and solar radiation and increased prevalence of C4 (warm season) grasses. But the C4 grasses led to a reduction in pasture quality during summer and spring.

Unadapted systems resulted in a decline in milk solids production per cow and per hectare in both 2030 and 2080, compared with 2000.  The picture changed when adaptation measures were undertaken. Key adaptation measures included a range of farm management decisions which included earlier calving and increased stocking rates.  With such measures the paper reported adaptation can be profitable and turn the potential negative of lower pasture quality into the positive of more production.  However the writers acknowledge that they did not consider the impacts of the recommended adaptations on significant environmental issues. More cows may increase nutrient and greenhouse gas losses from the farm.

It was such consequences that left me wondering how robust some of the adaptation measures may prove to be. Currently more cows mean more methane. Adaptation measures which also increase greenhouse gas emissions will surely be looked at askance by 2030. And the prospect of more nutrient run-off is fraught with environmental consequences. For arable farming the irrigation issue carries many questions likely to prove difficult of resolution. However there will no doubt be closer examination of these and other adaptation possibilities as time proceeds.  Presumably Federated Farmers will eventually emerge from its bunker and share in the process. The paper speaks of farm producers in New Zealand as innovative and adaptable and able to live with climate variability. But it points to climate change as more than variability when it goes on to ask whether those producers will be adaptable enough to manage a changing as well as variable climate. In the current mind-set of denial displayed by much of the farming community that seems to me an open question.