by frog
The NBR reports that the Nats are doing a deal with Labour to scrap the moratorium on new thermal generation in exchange for supporting the ETS through the House. In truth, only a grand coalition could possibly get an ETS through the House. However, I still think that the moratorium, (it’s not a ban, just a pause), is the right way to go.
I don’t often make predictions here on frog, but I feel inclined to do so today. I predict that if the Nats succeed in killing the moratorium in any meaningful way, we will end up with the Contact/Genesis LNG plant in New Plymouth and all kiwi consumers will be screwed by exposure to the international price of gas. Most kiwis will not be aware that natural gas prices are as out of control as oil prices are. We are not exposed to that because our own gas market is insulated from the world market.
Genesis will build their Rodney gas fired plant, (480 MW), while the gas is still cheap and local. This will displace the geothermal baseload plant that is scheduled to come online during the same time frame but which takes longer to build. Then Genesis will demand that the LNG terminal gets built in order to feed the Rodney plant, calling it security of supply for both Rodney and e3p. Once that happens, the huge volume of LNG available will swamp the market, enable the Motonui methanol plant to reopen, (not that this is bad, just unnecessary), and we poor homeowners will pay the full international retail price for our gas. Oh, and of course our electricity costs will skyrocket because our marginal electricity generation will be tied to the international gas price.
The moratorium, (not a ban, remember?), will allow geothermal baseload generation to be developed which is as cost effective in the short term as gas fired plant, but in the long term is much, much cheaper. No one can argue that geothermal will not be the cheaper and more secure baseload generation in the medium to long term. It is only greed and short-sightedness that is driving the current frenzy surrounding the ETS. The Nats are making a move because they sense that the Minister is on the back foot.
I beg the Minister to stand strong and keep the thermal moratorium intact within the legislation.
Published in Campaign | Economy, Work, & Welfare | Environment & Resource Management by frog on Fri, May 9th, 2008
Tags: Caontact, ETS, Frog, frogblog, Genesis, geothermal, green, LNG, methanex, minister, moratorium, motonui, natural gas, new zealand, party
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
The really important thing is that the Government must be prevented from underwriting the cost of gas as they did for e3p.
Gas generation will become uneconomic one day, and it is important that the price signals associated with that are not simply suppressed by general taxation filling the gap.
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NEWS FLASH!
Bracewell has just announced that he is going in 11 months time, does anybody have an idea how we can encourage the fool to go NOW?
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Won’t the ETS be enough on it’s own to drive decision making on generation investment ?
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how would it if investment is going in the other direction.
what is the point of an ETS if it is not for emissions reduction?
otherwise all it is is a carbon stockmarket, great for traders but useless for pollution reduction and emissions reductions.
Gerry Brownlee is close with Genesis Energy, so is Mike Williams.
I think we are seeing a closer working of the ‘grand coalition’ – the Lab Nats.
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Maw- it won’t necessarily. The ETS adds no extra cost to carbon, just the market price, so as carbon-reducing laws goes it’s actually rather friendly to polluters.
It’s really disasterous that this is going to need to go to the nats, quite frankly, as that means the whole thing is going to get watered down so that we drag even further behind on climate change.
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I don’t know much about this issue, however isn’t adding to our capacity to generate our own liquid fuels a good idea? Isn’t this helping achieve the infrastructure required for energy independence?
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how is NZ selling its oil from the great south basin to exxon mobil energy independence?
how is solid energy selling coal to china, australia, america, india and japan energy independence?
we bring oil in, we bring gas in and we even bring coal in.
have a read about our energy supplies before such phrases peter.
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it is about building fossil fuel power stations and ignoring the fact that oil is finite and so is gas and coal.
labour want to build stations ro make brown coal (the dirtiest) diesel.
this isn’t about reducing emissions to them, it is about creating a brand (nz inc) and a marketing line ‘clean and green’ – to sell tourism, dairy, fruit, coal and so on.
our environmental represenitives in parliament specialise in myth making and greenwash, not sustainability and looking after people.
they are taxplayers, they play with your tax and tell you why they know whats best to do with it. they will say power shortage, so they can make more fossil fuel generation.
national and labout are playing the same game here. national BTW is not releasing energy policy till just before the elections… why would that be…
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Won’t the ETS be enough on it’s own to drive decision making on generation investment ?
Only if businesses have to actually pay the price. Instead, they’re lobbying for special exemptions and free credits. But then, this approach is absolutely typical for NZ.
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Clean brown coal?
“Australian company Exergen says a multi-million-dollar investment will allow it to build a new plant to make brown coal more environmentally friendly.
The company has successfully trialled new technology at its pilot plant at Beaconsfield in northern Tasmania. The technology removes moisture and contaminants from the coal, reducing carbon emissions.”
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“There is enough brown coal in the La Trobe Valley to last another 500 years and it’s cheap. Brown coal’s fuel component in the cost of producing electricity is about $3 per megawatt-hour compared with black coal’s $9 to 15/MW-hour and natural gas’s more than $20/MW-hour”
tinyurl.com/5bx9fw
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The price difference pretty closely matches the energy content difference.
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blue peter – have you done anything outside reading the press releases from the coal company working on ‘coal diesel’?
have you read James Hansen from NASAs comments on coal – from his letter to the Prime Ministers of Australia and Germany?
Have you read much about mountiantop removal mining in America?
here is a report looking into it in America http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/coal/liquids.pdf
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ill start with some info on coal mining accidents and diseases that aflict miners, if you want i’ll find some info specific to newzealand on southland lignite plans, costs, promblems and overseas comparisons.
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discussion
The track record for fossil fuel production is far worse than that of other fuel production, in particular nuclear fuel. Fossil fuels are not clean or safe in their extraction, transport, storage and waste generation. This document lists some of the disasters that have occurred recently at various stages of creating fossil fuel-based energy. Fossil fuels are, of course, strongly implicated in global warming concerns. Also compare with much lower evidence of serious disasters linked to the nuclear generation industry.
While not discussed in this document, keep in mind that the steadily dwindling of fossil fuel resources is also a driving factor behind inter-state friction and the vast costs of associated military actions.
coal
in the United States of America:
serious accident in us coal mine – 2 miners missing [January 2006]
“Doug Conaway, the director of the state’s Miners’ Health, Safety and Training, said that on Thursday just before 6 p.m., a monitor picked up a reading of carbon monoxide and a directive was issued for the crew to get out. This was about 10,000 feet into the mine and about 900 feet underground.
“As they started toward the outside they were all together and encountered light smoke,” said Mr. Conaway. At that point, the crew donned their personal rescue gear, he said.
“The smoke became very heavy at that point in time,” he said. “For some reason the other two individuals got separated from the other 10.” ?
West Virginia explosion traps 13 coal miners [December 2005]
“CHARLESTON, West Virginia (Reuters) – An early morning explosion at a West Virginia coal mine trapped 13 miners more than a mile (1.6 km) underground on Monday and rescuers struggled to reach them.?
blasting for coal
“We are certain that Montana is going to put its gasification plants on the back burner and even though Tom Freidman says “Montana has one-third of all the coal deposits in America – 8 percent of all the coal in the world. Montana’s coal is roughly equivalent to 240 billion barrels of oil. “That’s enough to replace all our imported oil for 60 years.” they will leave it in the ground out of equal concern for their own backyards.?
Two useful, short films showing something of the destruction in the Appalachians, and in West Virginia.
(add comment)
in China:
“Nov. 27, 2005: Coal dust catches fire at the Dongfeng Coal Mine in Qitaihe, a city in Heilongjiang province, killing at least 134 miners.?
China has many coal-mining accidents. Here another two of the larger ones:
“-Feb. 15, 2005: An explosion in Sunjiawan coal mine in Liaoning province kills 214 miners.
“-Nov. 28, 2004: An explosion in the state-run Chenjiashan Coal Mine in the northwestern province of Shaanxi kills 166 miners.?
The above linked article has details of more Chinese mining accidents.
In China alone, ten to twenty thousand probably die directly in coal-mining each year.
“Official statistics show more than 7,200 coal miners were killed in gas explosions, floods, cave-ins and other accidents last year, making China’s mines by far the world’s deadliest. But the real figure could be around 20,000, labour rights groups say, as many deaths are covered up or fail to enter the official statistics for various reasons.?
Although only accidents in the USA and China are thus far listed, many other countries have coal-mining industries which are disaster centres.
65 trapped in Mexico [21.02.2006]
“Shovel load by shovel load, rescuers were yesterday inching towards 65 miners trapped inside a coalmine in northern Mexico. As hope of finding their loved ones alive faded, relatives waiting for news outside were left praying for divine intervention.
“The men were trapped early on Sunday after an underground explosion, apparently caused by a build-up of gas, led to the collapse of several shafts. Around a dozen miners working near the surface managed to get out of the mine. Seven were taken to hospital with burns and broken bones.? [Quoted from guardian.co.uk]
Note that explosions can also be caused by the very fine coal dust igniting/exploding.
black lung disease
Data regarding the numbers of coal-workers suffering from this industrial disease are very hard to find, most countries preferring to keep quiet about their large mortality. China, for instance, only started releasing air pollution data in 1998. abelard.org has found fairly reasonable data for the USA, who are prepared to publish statistics. For most other countries, it has been a matter of gleaning bits of data from here and there.
This section is primarily concerned with mining workers. However, that is a small proportion of those damaged by fossil fuel filth. Here is a claim we have found concerning the general population:
“Worldwide, particulate and SO2 pollution cause at least 500,000 premature deaths, 4 to 5 million new cases of bronchitis, and millions of other respiratory illnesses per year.? [Quoted from wvhighland.org]
what is black lung disease?
Black lung disease is the result of the lungs being coated with coal dust as miners work at the coal-face hacking out the coal, or elsewhere shifting the lumps of coal or mining waste.(When hit for any reason, coal easily disintegrates into tiny, insoluble particles of coal dust and other components such as silica.) Because coal-mining has been, and in some countries still is, a widespread industrial activity, there are large numbers of black lung disease sufferers. This disease is also called coal worker’s pneumoconiosis (CWP).
The name, black lung, comes from the distinctive blue-black marbling of the lung from the coal dust accumulation. This disease occurs mostly in those who mine hard coal (anthracite), but also occurs among those mining soft coals and graphite. After about ten to twenty years of exposure, symptoms to set in and it may be aggravated by silica (causing silicosis) mixed with the coal.
“CWP, a progressive (with continued exposure) and incurable condition, [that] begins with the inhalation of small coal dust particles. [This causes] a localized inflammation, usually in the upper part of the lungs, followed by the formation of fibrous scars. Although asymptomatic in the early stages, as CWP advances, scarred areas in the lungs increase and coalesce. With massive fibrosis, or scarring, pulmonary function decreases, sometimes fatally. Chest X rays are the only way to confirm CWP, and there is no cure other than a lung transplant.? [Quoted from Environmental Health Perspectives]
Black lung disease includes symptoms of pneumoconiosis, silicosis, asthma, chronic bronchitis and emphysema. These symptoms are generally lumped under the label chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD.
sickness and death from coal worker’s pneumoconiosis
Historically, black lung disease (or CWP) has caused many hundreds of thousands of deaths throughout the world. These deaths were to both the coal miners and to the general population. There was a generalised burning of coal for heating and for industry, which resulted in sometimes lethal “coal smogs? in larger towns. It is only since various clean air acts were passed that deaths in the general population have decreased in modern industrial countries. Industrial victims have reduced considerably since stricter working regulations have been introduced. However, despite the reduction in new industrial deaths, there is still a steady mortality from previous coal-miners, as black lung disease can take as long as fifteen to twenty years to kill.
Doubtless, these diseases go back hundreds of years; there are reports concerning air pollution in south-east England in the 17th/18th centuries, relating to charcoal-burning, low visibility and the impossibility of putting clothes out to dry due to the filth in the air. I would there to be large effects in backward countries with open fires and poorly ventilated living spaces.
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blue peter –
this is from WWF – by no means a radical NGO
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The most mature coal variety, anthracite – hard, black and lustrous – is nearly pure carbon, and has historically been regarded as useful to humans because of its high energy content. But dirty brown coal, or lignite, produces most CO2 per unit of energy.
Coal-fired electricity plants are the single-largest source of CO2 emissions.
© WWF-Canon / WWF InternationalAbove all, more than a third of all global electricity is generated from coal – it is the power sector’s single biggest source of energy.
China, the United States and India are the top 3 producers in the world. Poland, South Africa, Australia, China and India all rely on it to produce over 75% of their electricity.
Half of global mercury emissions come from coal-fired power plants in the Asia-Pacific region, where acid rain costs some $90 billion every year.
It is these facts that makes the use of coal in electricity generation so significant. That is why the power sector was the focus of the recent WWF PowerSwitch! campaign.
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Coal-fired electricity plants are the single-largest source of CO2 emissions
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The public funds used to subsidise fossil fuel production and consumption could justifiably subsidise…sustainable energy.
Institute for Sustainable Futures Subsidies that Encourage Fossil Fuel Use in Australia (2003)
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don elder made the headlines………
http://www.carbonnews.co.nz/story.asp?storyID=712
ANALYSIS: Will Don Elder today spell out his dream for New Zealand?
Today 9:00am
What did Don Elder hope to achieve by assuming a carbon price of $200 per tonne and almost nil-emissions reduction – to produce a result showing the Government could make a surplus of up to $80 billion from its emissions trading scheme?
When he produced the outrageously successful headline-grabbing rabbit from his hat before yesterday’s select committee hearing on the emissions trading bill, he must have known its members are in possession of a still-secret paper from Treasury dealing with the same issues.
… login or subscribe for full story
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tinyurl.com/57xffu
New Study Released: Warming Models Wrong, Yet Again
“Computer analyses of global climate have consistently overstated warming in Antarctica, concludes new research by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and Ohio State University. While the observed Antarctic temperatures rose by about 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.2 degrees Celsius) over the past century, the climate models simulated increases in Antarctic temperatures during the same period of 1.4 degrees F (0.75 degrees C).”
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What’s your point? ‘Models bad’? How do you reconcile your paragraph with this sentence from the same article?
“Researchers have used atmospheric observations to confirm that computer models are accurately simulating climate for the other six continents.”
I spose one must also take this into consideration:
“they have unique challenges simulating Antarctic climate because of limited information about the continent’s harsh weather patterns.”
“Part of the reason that Antarctica has barely warmed has to do with the ozone hole over the continent.”
Well it’s doing some good! I wonder what the overall rate of melt vs build up is?
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New Study Released: Warming Models Wrong, Yet Again =/=
Climate Models Overheat Antarctica, New Study Finds..
wrong in some details but not dead as you imply.
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Less “models bad”, and more “modelling the climate is freaking hard”, I’d suspect.
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Ari, yeah, surely, but using one example to say that models-plural are wrong is really a bit silly. Especially with the first sentence I quoted. My general impression is that models are good for long term climate, but not so much regional or short term trends…
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so whats the govt doing about it besides self congratulation and slow moving policy, that wobbles when industry blows…?
despite admitting we have rising emissions and an image vunerability (clean and green – reality vs marketing), there is money fore motorway after motorway and SOEs pushing hard for coal and gas, and crown minerals and ministers pushing for oil).
either we want to be sustainable and work on the cost of living… or we are after a quick buck, regardless the consequences.
How much profit are companies like Genesis Energy and Solid Energy making (and Fonterra) and what is the pattern of food and energy costs….?
Labour and National both talk about the cost of living and struggling households… while the likes of Fonterra and SE benefit from those rising costs (price rises – profits).
Sustainable – ‘clean and green’ NZ – ????????????????
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Stephen- I agree with you. I’m supportive of models as our best tool for climate predictions, because there’s no demonstratably better alternative. I just have no illusions that modelling something as complicated as the climate is going to be hard and there will be mistakes- fortunately for us the models have been more forgiving than recently suggested, but the timeframe for action that Labour and National are giving us is probably still too slow even then.
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Yeah Ari, I shall stress that that is the impression I get from reading around, not so much any ‘definitive statement’.
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I think the thermal moratorium has contributed to the failure of the ETS because it has effectively said the ETS will not work. Once that happened all the other sectors could legitmately say – why impose the ETS if you know it won’t work? It was a silly move to achieve political ends that the market was already coping with and ignored the very valued role that thermal plays in supporting a more renewable system. Interesting COntact is saying its ‘peaking’ plants will run 50% of the time. If you think it is going to be expensive running gas, imagine if we are dependent on gas peaking plants…
But I Don’t agree about the LNG -that is a very long way off and still highly speculative. I see Maui just got another 7 years added to its life. Gas has a habit of turning up in greater quantities.
It should not head off geothermal as much of the geothermal is already in planning and approval if not construction. LNG is nowehre near it. You fail to recognise that geothermal has overpromised in the past and is not without limits.
And if you are worried about mercury emissions, best not take a swim in the Waikato downstream from Wairakei…
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Geothermal is not the clean green source it is sold as- there are high levels of arsenic and other heavy metals, as well as sulphides and large quantities of dissolved carbon dioxide. Some geothermal generation has 80% of the carbon emissions of a thermal plant per KWh. There is however a massive expansion program going on right now, IIRC due to the new tribal owners of the land being quite pro-active about it.
I seriously doubt the methanol plant would be anywhere near economic if gas prices rise further- it was closed because of the lousy economics wasn’t it? No doubt it needs vast capital investment too.
There are no magic bullets wrt electricity. The best solution IMHO would be more BIG hydro, more wind, and retaining some thermal for peak. It is ridiculous having Whirinaki running so much, that must be costing a fortune…
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uk_kiwi Says:
May 12th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
> Geothermal is not the clean green source it is sold as- there are high levels of arsenic and other heavy metals, as well as sulphides and large quantities of dissolved carbon dioxide. Some geothermal generation has 80% of the carbon emissions of a thermal plant per KWh.
All these problems can be solved by using ‘double-cycle’ geothermal generation. This is where the geothermal liquid and gas that comes up is entirely in a closed pipe system, andf all goes back down once you’ve got the heat out of it. It’s called ‘double-cycle’ because the heat from the pipe opf geothermal fluid is transferred to water outside the pipe, and it is the boiling of this water that drives the turbine. AFAIK there is no geothermal plant like this in New Zealand yet.
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Modern geothermal plant reinject their waste water, which largely deals with the issues of arenic, sulphides and heavy metals, and (I believe) the CO2 as well. In addition, reinjection also deals with the subsidence problems.
Trevor.
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Trevor29
New Zealand doesn’t require its geothermal powerstations to reinject by law. One of the few in the world apparently. I learnt that Wairaki doesn’t much to my horror after taking a few swims at Fall James on the Waikato river after being told so by my tutor who wasn’t too happy about being a devout environmentalist.
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latest from greenpeace:
no response yet from don elder, solid energy or any industry front they maintain -
Carbon capture and storage a “scam”
Monday, 12 May 2008, 1:10 pm
Press Release: Greenpeace New Zealand
Carbon capture and storage a “scam” says new report
Auckland, 12 May 2008 – Big business and policy-makers must not succumb to the elusive promise of carbon capture and storage (CCS) to solve the climate crisis, says Greenpeace in a major new report (1).
‘False Hope: Why carbon capture and storage won’t save the climate’ relies on independent, peer-reviewed scientific sources and details why CCS is a dangerous distraction in the fight against climate change. It reveals that the technology is unproven, risky, and expensive, and will be developed to the detriment of sustainable solutions.
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“Relying on CCS to tackle carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal is about as smart as wilfully contracting a disease in the hope that medical science may one day provide a cure,” said Greenpeace New Zealand Climate Campaigner Susannah Bailey.
“The unproven technology for capturing carbon dioxide then dumping it underground remains very much on the drawing board, yet is being promoted by big polluters such as Solid Energy as a way for them to proceed with coal expansion plans (2). Carbon capture and storage is the ultimate coal industry ‘greenwash’ tool.
“The priority should instead be investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency.” Fraught with uncertainties over practicality and cost, CCS technology is not expected to be commercially available before 2030. By then it will be too late for it to play a role in combating climate change. Climate experts agree that global greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2015 and be at least halved by 2050.
“It is insanity verging on criminal negligence to pass over clean energy and pin hopes on an unproven technology instead,” said the report’s author, Emily Rochon, Climate and Energy Campaigner at Greenpeace International. “Businesses need to reduce their emissions not search for excuses for continuing polluting.
“Enthusiasm for CCS is reaching fever pitch among coal and oil advocates who have lost the battle over whether climate change is a problem. Unable to look beyond the carbon economy, they are desperate to project CCS as the way to continue with ‘pollution-as-usual’,” said Ms Rochen.
“Just as there is no guaranteed safe way to bury nuclear waste, there is no guaranteed safe way to bury carbon. No matter how much research goes into CCS, the ability to keep this carbon stored under ground for thousands of years can never be guaranteed,” said Ms Bailey. “Even Solid Energy Chief Executive Don Elder acknowledges this (3).
“Every dollar invested in carbon capture and storage research is a wasted dollar if it diverts money away from renewable energy and energy efficiency.”
The Greenpeace report shows that carbon capture technology falls short on numerous counts. Carbon capture has not been made to work on anything approaching the scale needed for a full-scale power plant. And no one has yet successfully combined the ‘capture’ with the ’storage’ elements of the concept.
The process of capturing and storing carbon is also highly energy intensive. The increased energy requirements of CCS would effectively wipe out the power plant efficiency gains of the last 50 years. For every four CCS-equipped coal-fired power plants, a fifth would be needed just to make up the energy shortfall. CCS could also double plant costs and lead to electricity price hikes estimated between 21 and 91 per cent.
Greenpeace’s Energy Revolution scenario (4) shows that greatly improving energy efficiency and relying on renewable energy could halve global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the timeframe for preventing the worst impacts of climate change. Global renewable energy resources are sufficient to meet the world’s energy needs six times over.
Over 85 non-governmental organisations have joined Greenpeace in demanding that CCS not be used as an excuse for building new coal-fired power plants. The signatories include the Environmental Defence Society of New Zealand.
Notes to Editors:
(1) “False Hope: why carbon capture and storage won’t save the climate”, Greenpeace International. May 2008 is available at: http://www.greenpeace.org/ccs. Also available: the Executive Summary of the report, an information sheet on CCS, three graphics (as PDFs) showing: the process of carbon capture; an overview of geological storage options and leakage pathways and potential impacts of CO2 escape, plus the NGO statement on carbon capture and storage.
(2) Solid Energy recently announced a $100 million investment in clean coal and alternative energy research over the next 20 years, in a bid to develop cleaner ways of burning coal and capturing and storing C02 emissions. Solid Energy is involved in the trial of CCS in Nirranda South, 240km west of Melbourne. The Otway Basin pilot project is the world’s largest demonstration of the deep geological storage of carbon dioxide. It’s partly funded by the New Zealand government and state-owned miner Solid Energy and will inject 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide 2km deep over the next two years.
(3) Solid Energy chief executive Don Elder told NZPA last month that it was impossible for industry to guarantee no leakage. In relation to Otway Basin (2) he said: “it is likely that only tiny, almost negligible, amount of the carbon dioxide pumped underground will escape.” He stated that there’s no guarantee that they could abide by regulations that required 99.99 per cent storage over thousands of years. Yet as is noted in False Hope, even if just 0.01 per cent leaks per annum, 50 per cent of the stored carbon dioxide will have leaked within 7000 years. If 1 per cent leaks per annum, 50 per cent will be lost within 70 years.
(4) http://www.greenpeace.org/new-zealand/press/reports/nz-energy-revoluti on-report
ENDS
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“Every dollar invested in carbon capture and storage research is a wasted dollar if it diverts money away from renewable energy and energy efficiency.?
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Wairaki was one of the world’s first geothermal power stations. If I recall correctly, it is being replaced by an air-cooled station above the wells that will use reinjection wells – and deliver more power.
While reinjection may not be required by law, it is almost essential to get through the RMA. (The exception might be sites where the hot water escapes into the countryside anyway.)
Trevor.
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genesis Energy has some opposition:
Opposition voiced to Rodney power station
A large number of submissions to a Rodney power station proposal are expected by the time submissions close at 4pm on Friday.
Genesis Energy is seeking a private plan change for a site on State Highway 16 about three kilometres south of Kaukapakapa to allow a 480 megawatt gas-fired station proposal to proceed.
The plan change request is before the Rodney District Council, while 15 resource consent applications are being considered by the Auckland Regional Council.
A number of people attended a submission writing workshop in Kaukapakapa on
Saturday.
“We had the hall booked for two hours,” says Kaukapakapa Residents and Ratepayers Association committee member Pip McAlwee. “But people were still writing furiously an hour after we were supposed to leave.”
Greenpeace representatives attended to show their support and help with questions.
“We are aware that many Rodney residents are extremely concerned about the environmental impacts of the proposed gas-fired power station,” says Greenpeace climate campaigner Simon Boxer.
“Greenpeace supports the vital campaign work local residents are undertaking to oppose this climate polluting plant,” he says.
“The Rodney power station is a real test of the Government’s commitment to tackling climate change.”
Six of the resource consents applied for directly affect the Kaukapakapa River, an inland water protection zone area, says Mrs McAlwee.
Of particular concern to residents is Genesis Energy’s proposal to take 2400 cubic metres of river water, and discharge 1900 cubic metres of power plant wastewater back into the river daily.
Locals opposing the proposal have had messages of support from individuals and environmental groups throughout New Zealand.
“Many were amazed when told that the power station was still going ahead” says Mrs McAlwee.
“The government imposed a 10-year moratorium on new baseload thermal plants in October, and advised state-owned generators in a letter that the government ‘doesn’t expect new thermal capacity to be either economic or necessary to ensure security of supply’.”
Genesis Energy has retained the original baseload configuration for the thermal plant. It maintains the power station is essential for security of the power supply north of Auckland.
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Air pollution in cities across the world is causing some two million premature deaths every year according to the World Health Organization. Some urging nations to adopt stricter air pollution standards. The international health agency’s new air quality guidelines call for nations to reduce the impact of air pollution by substantially cutting levels of particulate matter, ozone and sulfur dioxide. The ozone levels have been rising drastically over the last few decades, especially thanks to our use of fossil fuels. It may be in our best interest to reduce those levels, even if means getting installment loans to do it. Recent studies have shown that increased ozone exposure, even at low levels, lead to greater amounts of respiratory illness and death. There is a higher prevalence of emphysema and other pulmonary disorders in areas with high ozone levels that has risen even after the number of smokers has declined. The cost of gas has come at too high a price. We all may pay with our lives due to ozone levels.
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