by frog
With the stroke of a pen, Nick Smith is calling Meridian Energy and LandCare Research frauds and painting emissions offsetting as modern day hocus-pocus. I guess this means that National has gone completely off the boil for emissions trading and is willing to come clean on their policy of climate change denial.
He then goes on to have a crack at the Renewable Preference, claiming that there are no renewables that can take the place of thermal generation. Clearly he hasn’t been reading his mail, because Mighty River Power are about to commission a geothermal power station starting next month with a further new development coming on stream in just over a year. Last time I checked, geothermal was both renewable and baseload.
He has asked the Commerce Commission to investigate Meridian. I hope they do. If the CarboNZero programme is a fraud, we would all like to know. If not, Nick had better prepare to withdraw and apologise. He has impugned the reputation of two of New Zealand’s most respected companies. It is just ridiculous enough a claim that we cannot blame it on poor research, but rather self-aggrandisement.
Published in Environment & Resource Management by frog on Fri, June 13th, 2008
Tags: baseload, climate change, fraud, geothermal, LandCAre Research, Meridian Energy, Mighty River Power, Nick Smith, offsetting
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
>>climate change denial
Why has the rehetoric shifted from “man made global warming denial” to “climate change denial”? Seems to be a downgrade.
And I doubt Nick Smith denies climate change, as everyone is aware the climate always changes.
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heh – frog, how Nick Smith became one of the top National Party MPs is beyond me. The guy is all over the place and just doesn’t have clue as to what he’s on about. I mean the guy is National’s spokesperson for Environment, RMA and Climate Change, yet he doesn’t know that the Ministry of economic development is expecting huge growth in geothermal output over the next couple of decades. What an embarrassment he must be for them.
BP-
I suspect it’s a matter of too many syllables to be a useful catch-phrase.
“And I doubt Nick Smith denies climate change, as everyone is aware the climate always changes.”
The colloquial meaning of “climate change” is equivalent to AGW.
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I actually agree that we have a stretch to go replacing thermal with renewable. Sure there are examples, and theoretic possibilities, but – today – I don’t see where you are going to conjur up the significant chunk of a GW of non-thermal generation.
My personal opinion is that we are going to see a resurgence of coal fired generation in the next decade or two. I’d love to see a realistic way out of this conundrum, but I’ll not hold my breath.
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“He has impugned the reputation of two of New Zealand’s most respected companies.”
But frog, yesterday you said Landcare was one of NZs sh!ttiest companies.
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dbuckley:
By 2050 the MED is expecting around 3000 MW of extra capacity to come from Hydro, Wind and Geothermal. Though if we are to keep growing electricity production to meet demand you’re right that a lot more coal-fired combined cycle plants will be needed.
See page 37 of this MED report
The cheapest option (especially given Kyoto) of course is demand reduction through efficiency incentives. Though don’t expect the National Party to take that fact on board.
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Kevyn – yesterday I was beating up on LandCorp, not LandCare!
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Actually, I meant page 32 of the report (actually read from page 30 through to page37 if you have the time). We need another 32,000 gWh of generation to meet demand, but Wind, Hydro and Geothermal are only projected to account for around half of that.
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Here is a fix of roger nome’s link to that great report:
http://www.pce.govt.nz/reports/allreports/1_877274_57_7.pdf
And it’s the PCE, not the MED’s report…
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You think we’ve got it bad: [Click to read] FUEL CRISIS: Forget warnings of panic at the pumps. Britain is set to lose nearly half its electricity in six years from the Daily Mail.
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>>The colloquial meaning of “climate change? is equivalent to AGW
Dunno. Seems to have shifted from “global warming” to “climate change” of late. Curious.
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I’ve read Nick Smiths piece and sad to say he is spot on.
Meridian buying Gigawatt hours from coal fired stations and then claiming that their power is carbon neutral is just dishonest.
If they were growing forests or doing some other real offset then that would be OK. But they are just buying ‘notional offsets’ from the Tararua wind farm. This type of offset is just a joke and a con. And this use of them is not correct even if you agree with the original concept!
Windpower takes a lot of carbon emission to set up so windpower itself can never be carbon neutral, they emit in the order of 0.1 ton C per MWH.
Meridians main hydro based generation is much better than this but even then is not zero.
Dishonest advertising cashing in on peoples desire to be green. Shame on you for standing up for them Frog.
It doesn’t matter that is was Nick Smith that pointed this out, why didn’t Jeanette?
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That PCE report
http://www.pce.govt.nz/reports/allreports/1_877274_57_7.pdf
is already three years old. It practically dismisses wave power. 100MW by 2050 – get real! New Zealand has a world-class wave resource.
Tidal power didn’t even get a mention despite New Zealand having a world-class tidal resource in the form of Cook Strait.
The cost of CO emissions is quaintly outdated as well.
Trevor.
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Frog, My apologies. Must be time for reading glasses.
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In some rather shrewd sleight of and hand the UN Framework convention on Anthropogenic Global Warming met a few years ago and decided to officially change the term Anthropogenic Global warming to simply Climate Change.
In other words in all their official documents (including IPCC documents) climate change is now defined as Anthropogenic Global Warming. I alerted the Select Committee on renewable energy etc to this fact because if I was asked if I believed in Climate Change and said yes, then according to the UN I was referring to AGW rather than climate change.
This new definition has helped the news media refer to any extreme weather event as evidence of climate change whether it is a blizzard or a drought.
And on the thread itself I presume you all know the story about the carbon neutral Mill Grove wine and what happened to their carbon neutral status as certified by Landcare’s CarbonNZero programme?
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personally I think Nick has a bit of a point (and ‘Clean” meridian does use coal in the south btw).. offsets doing decrease the emissions – they are a good cop bad cop.. or one naughty, one good.. kinda thing. I’ll have a coal power station and a forest please…. should balance out eh…
Landcare Research got in trouble in the past re a witness stuff up (conflict of interest):
( Counter claims by Landcare Research CEO, Dr Andy Pearce and Solid Energy CEO Dr Don Elder over the withdrawal of a witness from an Environment Court hearing don’t stack up against information obtained under the Official Information Act, Forest and Bird said today.
“If there was no pressure to withdraw the witness, what on earth were Dr Pearce and Dr Elder trying to “compromise” over?” Forest and Bird’s Conservation Manager Kevin Hackwell asked.
“Landcare Research’s own lawyer is on record as advising that unless Dr Pearce and Dr Elder could reach a compromise, Landcare Research would have to seek the scientist’s withdrawal as a witness, or limit him to acting in a personal capacity. If Solid Energy wasn’t seeking the withdrawal of the scientist, why was there a need to seek such a compromise?”
Following discussions between Dr Pearce and Dr Elder, Dr Pearce told the scientist that he could only appear as a private consultant, although Forest and Bird and the Buller Conservation Group had contracted him as a Landcare Research scientist.
“Dr Pearce’s claim that he did not pressure a scientist to withdraw from giving evidence is less than the full story. The scientist was put in such a position that any person with integrity would have no choice but to withdraw,” he said.
“Instructing the scientist concerned and other staff involved in the Cypress mine case not to mention his more than 30 years employment by Landcare and its predecessors created the circumstances where withdrawal was inevitable,” he said.
“The scientist was put in an untenable position. He could not have given evidence without misleading the Court. If the scientist had obeyed his employer’s instructions in his written brief of evidence and during cross-examination in Court he would not have been telling the whole truth as required.”
“Dr Pearce claims Landcare Research frequently had scientists appearing as witnesses for varying parties, but has failed to adequately explain why it was not possible in this case. Landcare Research’s own records state that staff were concerned that contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars were at risk.”
“It is revealing that Dr Pearce instructed Landcare Research staff to conceal a scientist’s employment from the Environment Court after discussing the matter with Solid Energy CEO Dr Don Elder,” he said. http://www.forestandbird.org.nz/mediarelease/2005/0708_solidenergyexcuses.asp )
and meridian has pissed people off re its cheap power energy deal with rio tinto/comalco.
what nick said is here: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0806/S00191.htm
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some people are arguing offsets are like CCS and not going to reduce emissions overall. if you are burning more fossil fuels, and cutting more forests down and all the rest.. the emissions will keep rising.
carbon neutral is a very loose phrase with no targets or clear outcomes.
in the UK a group called Keep It In The Ground.. is calling for just that… leaving fossil fuels like coal.. in the ground…
heres the action they just did:
Leave it in the Ground: Drax Coal Train Halted
imc-uk-features | 13.06.2008 13:55 | Climate Chaos
On 13th June 2008 protestors halted a coal train carrying fuel for Drax power station in Yorkshire, the single biggest source of CO2 in the UK. Dressed in white overalls and canary outfits, the protestors used safety signals to stop the train on a bridge overlooking the power station, before climbing on board and dumping coal off onto the tracks.
The train was stopped on a branch line used exclusively for delivering coal to Drax. Protestors used a network of climbing ropes to suspend themselves under the bridge from the train to prevent the train from moving. The latest report is of police evicting the protestors.
The protest comes six weeks before the 2008 Camp for Climate Action at Kingsnorth power station – which will also highlight how using coal to supply energy will be a disaster for the planet. Meanwhile the UK Government has “eviscerated” the Climate Change Bill and abandoned 2°C maximum target for global temperature rise as scientists warn that a safe CO2 level might be a maximum of 350ppm — we are already at over 380ppm and the Arctic permafrost is melting.
Photos: 1 | 2
Reports: 1 | 2
Links: The Coal Hole | Climate Camp
Last September James Hansen, spelt out the situation with coal in a letter to Gordon Brown:
“The single greatest threat to the climate comes from burning coal. Coal-fired generation is historically responsible for most of the CO2 in the air today – responsible for about half of all carbon dioxide emissions globally?
Last month activists protested on proposed open cast coal mine site in Derbyshire under the banner Leave it in the Ground
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/06/401022.html
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So is geothermal power s’posed to be good for the environment or bad?
There seem to be mixed messages on the subject.
Some say its good:
http://www.generationisland.co.nz/power-to-the-people/geothermal.asp
And some say it’s bad:
http://www.ew.govt.nz/enviroinfo/geothermal/energy.htm#Heading3
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/01/geothermal_powe.php
http://www.teara.govt.nz/EarthSeaAndSky/HotSpringsAndGeothermalEnergy/GeothermalEnergy/5/en
So is geothermal s’posed to be good for the environment?
or is more about fixing one problem by creating another?
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treesoftomorrow Says:
June 14th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
> personally I think Nick has a bit of a point (and ‘Clean? meridian does use coal in the south btw)..
really? I can’t think of any coal-fired power stations in the south island, and Meridian have certainly gone on the record saying that they don’t use coal to generate electricity (though I’m sure they will be effectively buying electricity off other cpmpanies that do use coal at the moment).
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Is geothermal good or bad? It isn’t good. At best it is neutral. However the alternatives are also at best neutral and most are worse than geothermal, particularly coal.
Many of the issues with geothermal are related to the extraction of water. Reinjection deals with these issues, but the earlier geothermal systems didn’t have reinjection. Some issues relate to cooling, which requires resource management, i.e. not being too greedy. There are problems with heavy metals etc in the geothermal water but a closed cycle plant with reinjection simply puts these back into the ground. On the whole, done properly geothermal has amongst the least effects of any of the sources of power, and can operate for 50+ years.
That’s pretty good.
Trevor.
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Unfortunately, when the Governments of the day created the RMA they properly folded a whole heap of different Acts into the one to create a one stop shop, but forgot to re-introduce into the new Act the clear statements of ownership rights relating to the foreshore and seabed (which had been in the Harbours Act) and to geothermal resources which had been in some other Act – I forget which.
Consequently, in the face of unclear property rights (and the fact that most geothermal resources are in the middle of traditional Maori land areas such as Rotorua) most companies are unwilling to become test cases to sort out the issues.
Ngawha springs looked as though it would be OK (in Northland) but you may remember taniwha appeared and witnesses declared they would be upset but because they were not available to be cross examined no one quite knew what to do about it. The end result is a minimal field after many years and high costs and has hardly encouraged anyone to have another go.
In the meantime Iceland sources a huge percentage of its power from geothermal sources and so could we.
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For the record:
Dr Andy Pearce left Landcare Research nearly three years ago.
Also, Landcare Research should not be confused with the Landcare Trust or Landcorp – as Kevyn did above.
Landcare Research – a government owned Crown Research Institute – owns and opperates carboNzero.
Flashharry
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“really? I can’t think of any coal-fired power stations in the south island, and Meridian have certainly gone on the record saying that they don’t use coal to generate electricity (though I’m sure they will be effectively buying electricity off other companies that do use coal at the moment).”
They don’t supply any electricity to the national gird from coal, but they did have a coal boiler powering a hospital down south, but they are changing this to a renewable source.
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This boiler does not supply electricity but heat
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The fundamental problem with EMS (which is why the Green Party is right to prefer a tax neutral carbon tax) is that any claim to carbon neutrality etc can be challenged and proved wrong simply by expanding or changing the system boundary. Just as no one person or committee knows how to make a pencil no single person or committee knows how to calculate the carbon footprint of a pencil let alone of a building you have drawn with the pencil.
As usual the lawyers will clean up.
For example, if you claim your farm is carbon neutral I shall simply say “what about the wetland?” or “What about the GHGs used to make your tractor and what about the coffee growers in Brazil?” And “what about the postie who delivers your mail?” Where is the department of weights and measures who certifies the tonnes of carbon? Where is the equation which compares methane from the cows with the sink of the pasture?
No, a simple tax is the way to go, but one which goes up with global temp and generates refunds if temperatures fall.
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Here is a good example of what is wrong. When I went to Bali I thought I was going to a conference on policy and economics. I soon found the conference was a marketing arm for the 200 stalls in the trade fair going on outside all showing how good they were at playing the games described below.
Giant coal-fired power plant gets green subsidies
Robert Watts
A giant Indian company that has bought up famous British firms such as Jaguar, Land Rover and Tetley Tea is to get hundreds of millions of pounds in “green? subsidies to build one of the world’s biggest coal-fired power stations.
Tata will receive huge sums from the West for building the power station in India, thanks to the carbon trading system established by the Kyoto treaty. Critics say the system makes a mockery of attempts to combat climate change..
When the plant near the port of Mundra, in Gujarat, becomes operational in 2011 it will emit 25.7m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year – more CO2 than any power station in Britain.
Yet it will be classed by the United Nations as a source of “clean power?. That means Tata will be able to sell surplus “carbon credits?, established under the Kyoto treaty, to firms in the West. Energy groups will be able to buy the credits as an alternative to reducing CO2 emissions.
Related Links
Drax to burn imported wood to cut CO2 emissions
EU signals retreat over green pledges
It is estimated Tata could earn £30m a year from such sales. It has already received more than £230m in soft loans from the World Bank to build the plant.
Tom Picken, head of international climate at Friends of the Earth, said: “This plant exposes how the World Bank’s attempt to get involved in combating climate change is nothing but a farce.
“The World Bank is there to promote development. As we see clearly in this case, that aim conflicts utterly with their other aim of trying to protect the environment.?
The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank unit that lends money for private sector projects in the developing world, has classified the Tata plant as clean energy because it will use “supercritical? technology that produces up to 20% less CO2 than conventional coal-fired power stations.
However, critics say it will still produce more CO2 than some other energy sources such as a cleaner type of coal power technology known as “ultra supercritical?.
David Wheeler, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a US-based think tank, said the IFC’s funding of the plant “did not make any sense? and that Gujarat is an ideal place for solar power.
This is the first time the IFC has part-financed a coal-fired power station. The funding consists of a £230m loan to be repaid over 20 years. The cost of building the plant is said to be around £2.1 billion, but is expected to rise.
In the UK, Tata recently bought Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford in a deal worth £1.15 billion. Last year the conglomerate paid £6.2 billion for steelmaker Corus and eight years ago bought Tetley Tea for £271m. Three-quarters of Tata’s operations are now based outside India.
Tata Power, the subsidiary building the Mundra plant, said India is suffering a “chronic? energy shortage, with up to 450m people living in places without access to electricity.
“Coal-powered energy is vital to address India’s energy scarcity,? said Prasad Menon, managing director of Tata Power. “India and Tata are looking at renewable energy also, but solar is too expensive.?
Although Tata is a successful business it said help from the IFC loan was essential because Indian banks would not be willing to lend it the sums necessary for the new plant.
Rashad Kaldany, the head of infrastructure at the IFC, said: “This is a power station that will produce significantly less CO2 than other power stations of its size.?
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