by frog
Let’s talk energy!
Published in THE ISSUES by frog on Sat, October 30th, 2010
Tags: general debate
General debate, October 30, 2010
Published: October 30, 2010
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Please use 
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Windfarms aren’t being sought primarily for energy, but for carbon credits and ‘feel good’. The maintenance on them is huge, and their downtime major. Cradle to grave energy accounting is needed. Serious questions are needed.
Other countries have learned windfarms are not “the solution”, can’t we ever learn!
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I wonder how many people died this winter because they couldn’t afford to heat their houses.
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you wanna talk ‘energy’..?
there’s more energy here than you can poke a stick at..
http://whoar.co.nz/?s=energy
seriously..!..five years worth of archives..
(feel the width..!…)
with the timeline going back from today…
the first archive page has 40 entries…
..and that only gets you back to september 10th..this year..
…(warning..!..you could get lost there…)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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i liked the exchange at the end…where suzuki told hill ..in an accusatory-tone…
..that it had been one of the most negative interviews he had ever taken part in…
hill ..(after an ‘oh really..!)..(drily) retorted that he cd view it as her giving him the opportunities to present his arguments…
(kapow..!..hill 1..suzuki..zip…)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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tho’it wasn’t la hill at her best…
… perhaps her nadir being when she retorted that as the sun wd one day burn out..
..that irt was no different from oil..
..and how cd it be called renewable energy..?..(i know..!..i know..!..)
suzuki..after a brief stunned-silence..(drily) noted that by the time the sun turns off..
..we humans will be long gone..
(hill..1..suzuki..1..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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I don’t know what islands some people here live on, but there are thousands of tourists looking at Lake Karapiro because we happen to be hosting the world canoeing champs there.
This is the largest sporting even in NZ since the Commonwealth Games in Christchurch.
The main stand seats 10,000 people.
And Karapiro is behind a Hydro dam.
Hydro lakes are a major recreational resource in many countries and certainly many visitors to the US go out of their way to visit the Grand Coulee dam or the Hoover Dam or one of the many others scattered around the nation.
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yeah i know..that’s why i rated it hill 1…suzuki..zip…
..but it is a fine line to walk that one..
..the devils-advocate/foil/straight-man…
..lot’s of/some people ‘just don’t get it’…(c.f…suzuki..)
..and la hill is somewhat brusque..
..and has little time/regard for the niceties of radio-schmoozing…
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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Not really correct, windfarms are part of the solution as are other forms of sustainable generation and demand side changes like house insulation.
No one thing can make us sustainable in energy supply, but put them all together and we can do it.
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I wonder how many people have died because their power has been cut off.
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Expensive wind energy won’t make paying power bills any easier!
We are a windy, but very gusty, country. And often calm in winter when more power is needed. With Te Apiti turbines now out of warranty, the generation cost has increased by 25%. There are always turbines at Te Apiti not operating; a permanent maintenance crew; sometimes a crane putting on new blades! These turbines are ‘only’ 110 m high. Now the companies want them 150 m high, which are usually only located off-shore in other countries. How practical will they be in our gusty winds!
Windfarm spiel involves much expensive greenwash to very visibly make the generating companies look environmentally friendly and enable them to access government subsidies. It sure ain’t about making energy more afforable!
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I sure haven’t got much this weekend
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A whole lot less in this country than in others Todd.
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Confusing the value of a specific use (or misuse) of a power source with the value of having that power available in the first place,
The windfarm and its power are not the source of the problem with the dairy farms. Separate the two. The dairy farmers will use non-renewable power instead, which will do even more damage per liter of milk.
There are always turbines at Te Apiti not operating; a permanent maintenance crew;
…and there is always maintenance to be done at a hydro dam, or at a gas-turbine. This is part of the price of energy and it is ALWAYS part of that price. Wind turbines are not usually designed to NZ conditions. There is one brand that is of course… but that isn’t what was used at Te Apiti.
At 150 meters the wind is more constant, less gusty. Also, a larger wind turbine is a quieter wind turbine. I find them beautiful.
Finally, the cost of maintenance compared to the cost of diesel or gas is going to change. Your power bill is set largely by the marginal cost of the electricity that is generated from the non-renewable gas generators and coal-steam plants, not from the cost from the hydro dams… and you can’t ever get to energy conservation if you don’t actually charge real prices for the energy.
BJ
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One thing energy is never going to be, is more affordable.
Fossil fuel prices will hit the roof eventually, making wind power seem cheap in comparison.
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In our sunny country, when is NZ going to make solar power compulsory for new buildings.
Much of Christchurch central city needs rebuilding, perhaps a chance for a coordinated approach there for solar installations ….
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Who’s confusing use and misuse? The wind farm proponents regularly claim that a particular wind farm will “power 30 thousand houses”, or some such. They don’t add, “or perhaps 6 dairy farms”…..
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In the USA wind sourced energy is approaching 7c Kw, wouldn’t call that expensive.
What is expensive is that all energy produced in NZ is tied directly to the cost of oil, when this approaches @250 a barrel over the next 3 years then renewable sourced energy will go up proportionally. So the consumer will see no benefit at all from using renewables.
The Govt gets huge revenues from their energy companies, I cannot see the status quo changing, ever, nor will they actively encourage energy efficiencies like enforcing solar hot water generation panels on every dwelling, they have too much to loose.
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BJ, as ever, makes the case correctly and eloquently.
Buckminster Fuller noted that if the USA was to pop a little turbine on the top of every pylon in the country, then the USA would generate three times as much energy as she needs.
The trick with wind is not getting supply to match demand, but to get demand to match supply. We don’t (and neither does anyone else) have this capability, but I dont see it as an unsolvable problem; we started controlling demand nearly a hundred years ago with ripple control. Its effective, but slow; a single command takes several seconds to send due to the low bit rate of power line communication.
We now live in the internet age, and with a bit of brains and technology applied, we could do the same sort of thing as ripple control but on a much more granular level and with a sub-second response time.
That level of demand control would enable a much deeper penetration of wind power as part of our energy portfolio.
Large scale wind power – It’s possible™
(And maybe tomorrow I’ll do my “strategic solar” speech, its a bit late now)
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.
Preferbly at the consumer end (cheaper smaller scale units) so that the consumer can “top up” his/her enegy banks when the wind is blowing.
Storage units would utilise solar energy as well to be double effective.
Problem with electricity has always been the inability to store it in sufficient quantities for domestic use.
Some form of large battery (eg. big forkhoist type) and an inverter back to 240 volts (inverter could be intergrated to be part of a heat pump/water heater/aircon system to utilise the heat generated for other purposes).
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I believe all of the large NZ power companies and a fair number of the smaller ones are developing wind farms of various sizes. I can’t believe that they would all do this for the reasons Jean put forward. Power from wind farms is significantly cheaper than from gas-powered generation which is why these companies are investing in wind.
Trevor.
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Another is to use the hydro dams as reserve because they have storage. The generators without storage provide the primary power and the dams are used to fill the gaps.
There is a good opportunity to rebuild in Christchurch for energy efficiency, but power companies and the Government are stealing too much money from supplying power to want demand decreased.
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Some years ago a dairy operation on the Canterbury Plains told the Environment Court they had a $600,000 power bill pa. It’d be more now! And they’re sure not the only one. They just use the power & pay the bill. They don’t have to consider the consequences of the dams and turbines etc needed to generate that and the adverse effects they cause. All that energy burned up to pump water to make milk to transport to a factory and then evaporate it off! It makes no sense. Instead of arguing about coal v hydro v wind, WHEN is NZ going to address energy demand and its appropriateness.
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The problems with wind power as a major contributor to the grid are:
Once wind is contributing more than say 10 to 15% of load then every new kw of wind generation must be backed up with some other source. This backup power is hugely expensive because the generators sit doing nothing for much of the time and kick in only when the wind doesn’t blow. So it it more than double the cost of the back up generator alone.
Second the art of managing grids is matching supply and demand. The grid managers love stable supply such as geothermal and gas turbines and hydro (the preaks and lags are slow). The trouble with wind turbines is that a halving of wind speed reduces output by 8. Any of you who are yachties know that as many capsizes are backwards because wind can drop to nothing in a second or two. Its a grid manager’s nightmare.
WE now need much higher quality power (ie low entropy) than we used to because our computers which are every where need highly stable supply. It takes about 200 watts at the furnace to get a single watt into your microprocessor.
There is a place for wind. I had a windmill on my last property to irrigate my gardens. Water is easy to store.
But electricity is difficult to store. Until we address that problem cost effectively then wind may be the most difficult renewable source to manage at any scale.
How about waste to energy. Meremere should have been burning Auckland’s rubbish and returning power to the grid rather than being dismantled and taken to the tip.
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cd the green party candidate in mana be more of an embarrassment..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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i mean..seriously…!
was she given any media-training..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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Audi have just developed a prototype family car that does 375 miles on a single electric charge.
And recharge time is six minutes. But most recharging will normally be done at home on cheap overnight power rates. The present reporting is a bit thin but Audi would not come out with nonsense claims that would damage its reputation.
Cars are here to stay regardless of what happens to the price of oil or anything else. Since the invention of the horse with saddle and bridle humans have enjoyed private point to point transport. The car is the iron horse – not the train.
We can be reasonably be confident that by the time electric cars are dominating the fleet nuclear power will be the normas it is in France and Japan. Still the safest form of generation by far. (in terms of actual dead body count which is the one reliable measure) Hydro is as dangerous to life as Coal but that is because filling a hydro dam in Pakistan triggered a fault line to go active and the earthquake killed 30,000 people. Probably an abberation. Coals deaths are probably undercounted because for so long the Soviets and the Maoist Chinese had perfectly “safe” coal mines with no accidents and no dead bodies. Make of that what you will.
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and in that same debate on q&a matt mccarten kicked-arse….
..and gave a master-class in homing in on/articulating issues that resonate with voters…
in fact i wd recommend the green party take a copy of it to use as a media-training aid for all their candidates….
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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A bit off topic there phil u.
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Why am I subsidising big business with my power bill?
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I have determined that the cause of the first-paragraph-has-no-spacing bug is the comment rating plugin. Expect a fix on Monday.
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Todd
The hydro generators are owned by the Government so you are subsidising the State.
Arthur
And that evaporation of milk to create milk powder and its many products is our most valuable export product which earns the funds to buy your computer and anything else from overseas.
That milk powder also saves the lives of thousands of children in disaster and drought stricken areas every year.
What price human misery?
What are you prepared to forego for not producing this high value product.
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One way is pumped hydro, the one I know a bit about is Dinorwig in Wales, read about it in Wikipedia [link]. It’s parlour trick is it can go from standby to 1.8GW output in 16 seconds, which is a remarkable acheivement.
Pumped hydro as a wind excess absorber might work, but I dont think it would be sufficiently responsive and thus grid frequency stability would suffer.
And as Todd notes; us little domesticated users subsidise the larger users.
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Energy storage is the key, and has always been the key, to the sort of society we seek to create.
.
Efficient local storage, in the form suggested, isn’t easy to accomplish. Batteries are generally desperately inefficient to start with and degrade to hopelessly inefficient after a few thousands of cycles.
.
…which makes battery technology the 2nd most important thing we might invest in… or maybe we should pursue something else?
.
http://machinedesign.com/article/new-spin-for-flywheel-technology-0916
(large ones could smooth the output of a tidal power system in the strait, small ones would work on a household basis)
http://www.activepower.com/solutions/ups-systems/cleansource-ups-60hz/
http://www.pentadyne.com/
…although based on the tech page presented by pentadyne it would take ~30 of those systems to make up a 20 KwH backup… and I shudder to think of the cost. However much cheaper it might be than doing it with batteries.
.
.
respectfully
BJ
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My previous note is also addressed to Owen: Wind does become problematic the more of it you have, which is why rethinking how be balance supply and demand is the key to making it work. More wind with business as usual demand management does mean more spinning reserve.
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Owen McShane
Tell that to the Chernobyl children who are still dying. Deaths from coal burning air pollution are not easily quantifiable, but the same is true for the cancer deaths from reactor accidents. It is estimated that New Zealand has 10,000 deaths per year due to airborne contaminants. We have enough hydro and potential wind energy to never need to gamble with Nuclear power.
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dbuckley
All granted and this is why the US is putting so much time and effort into smart grids.
There is still fear that complexity increases the risk of chaotic behaviour and chaotic behaviour in a grid can lead to catastrophic results.
I just thing that wind is a limited generation resource and talking of 30% windpower in NZ is misleading and fanciful. Also we don’t like heaps of transmission lines across pristing countyside even though the turbines can be quite majestic. And naturally when you put turnines in the windiest places you can find the users are some distance away and the big pylons are in low wind locations for obvious reasons.
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The Government in turn subsidises big business energy requirements to maximise private sector profits. There is no benefit to the public, so why are we subsidising big business with overpriced power bills?
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the thread is called ‘general debate’..todd…
as such…
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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Phil u
Let’s talk energy!? Should we debate about what the debate should be about
I wounder why the elderly can’t afford to heat their houses on a pension when they paid for those damns to be built.
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sigh..todd..frog put that there because bj and others were hijacking the hobbit-thread…
mm’kay…?
(ahem..!..of course i have never ‘hijacked’ a thread…
..eh..?..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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Why should we pay for the power used for TV advertising? This equates to approximately 75 million dollars worth of power consumption per anum.
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I dont see much evidence of the USA building “smart grids”, just a lot of complaints that the existing grid isn’t up to the job.
But smart(er) grids aren’t then answer, and they may even be part of the problem: what is necessary is more smarts in the demand part of the equation, and that is right at the end of the chain, well past the grid. And we (and most sensible nations) have been building the infrastructure for the command and control of demand: the internet. We just haven’t figured out that demand management is the key to utilising intermittent power sources. Yet.
I’ve opined that New Zealand could be a world leader in this field…
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The unit cost of supply to households was increased so they could compete with each other for the big users.
A natural consequence of having the only KPI for power companies as immediate return on shareholder value.
Not to mention the overcharging simply because they are a natural cartel.
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Back in the day when the electricity supply industry was a “proper” Government department, the industry was optimised for efficiency of the assets, purely and exclusivly to minimize the cost to the government (and thus us) of investing in generation and distribution. Thus we had the world’s most extensive ripple control system, as managing demand is the best way to constrain the peak delivery needs of the system, and, essentially, that peak need determines the scale of the system. Reduce the peak demand, reduce the size of system needed to be built. The same overall amunt of electricity gets used, but that use is spread better over time.
Come the so-called “market reforms”, the system is now optimised for money generation, so the old grid that was entirely adequate is now pushed hard, and we need more generation as there is less desire not to build more generation. For industrial customers, their per unit electrical cost is based on their peak demand, so it is in the utility’s interest for their peak demand to be as high as possible.
The arguments about the people and monetary efficiencies of the industry before and after market reforms is a different issue to that of the efficiency of the generating (and distribution) assets. The reforms pretty much a flash in the pan, and even if there were any human or financial or economic benefits gained, they have come at an absurdly high price, negotiated every half hour ever since.
So doesn’t matter from which angle you look at it (ok, one exception!), the market reforms in the electricity sector have not actually benefitted New Zealand, and set us up far more poorly than we should be as energy becomes more expensive and effective use of resources becomes the key.
Now where is Phil to declare which side of the political spectrum he thinks I’m on today
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Estimated income from private household power bills = 7.92 Billion dollars per anum.
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Reinvestment at less than 7% of net profits.
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Take your point. I am part of the group that promote smart grids but are not making much headway, and I have tended to drop out of late. I agree that we could have been, and may still be world leaders. My general response to people who denigrate smart grids is “would you prefer a dumb one?” I did get involved in my DFC days with new means of microwave monitoring of the grid and reading meters and so on and we did seem to be smart at it.
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The reforms of the electricity industry – that were world wide were not driven by the normal pressures for efficiency etc. The real problem was just about everywhere the generation and distribution systems that had been built were about to run out of capacity (the early designers had build in quite a lot of redundancy to provide for growth but it all seemed to run out at the same time.)
So a huge amount of investment was required for the next generation of energy infrastructure. And at the time governments everywhere were strapped for cash and had little headroom for borrowing. (what goes around comes around).
So the move to privatise was driven by the need to get the private sector to pay and let the taxpayer of the hook. Consequently, there was very little work done on how to set up proper markets and just about everyone designed their ad hoc privatisation model. While our has its failings others – like California – were much worse.
When public policy reforms claim to be driven by one thing while actually being driven by something quite different the implementation is unlikely to deliver the proper goods.
One puzzling failure is the way we have let ludicrous RMA consent processes put the lid on much mini hydro development. A friend of mine has a mini hydro plant in Nelson and he just wants to extend the existing permit. It is taking years and costing scores of thousands of dollars. The consultants are just milking the system. In a case in Waikato the council required a consent to extract the water, then a consent to alter the flow (the turbine etc) then another consent to put the water back into the river.
Mini hydros could do a great job.
Especially as a DFC client of mine developed the Microprocessor approach to matching demand to generation by simply dumping surplus power. So you always run the mini hydro at full tilt regardless of demand and dump the surplus – normally to something like a hot water system or even a swimming pool.
The traditional engineering fraternity found it offensive because it was so simple. We put together a neat kit for the Pacific Islands where you picked up a dumped motor from the dump, wired it to run backwards, built a paddle turbine out of wood and sliced car tyres and managed the supply and demand with the Dumper.
Technically inefficient but economically HIGHLY efficient.
Think about it.
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When it come to marketing and economics I realise that industries have a need to grow their markets but the infant formula market needs to be considered outside of these usual practices due to the vulnerability of infants and young children. This is what the International Code of Marketing Breast-Milk Substitutes and subsequent relevant World Health Assembly resolutions are there for! Protection!
We have a paradoxical situation in New Zealand with the global goals of infant, young child health and maternal health being directly incompatible with this celebrated dairy expansion. It is important to remember that breastfeeding is about more than nutrition and food. Immune protection and robust immune system development are dependent on breastfeeding, which supplies essential support for the development of the immune-immature, vulnerable infant and young child. It’s also pretty critical to the health of the mother too – short and long-term – although this is often forgotten.
Please don’t post about the tired old ‘what about women who can’t breastfeed’ argument – research shows clearly that at least 96% of women can breastfeed – it’s not even that women don’t want to breastfeed as 90-94% of women start breastfeeding in NZ. It’s the support for women to keep breastfeeding that’s missing. Plus the misleading marketing of infant formula products which does not help.
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“The following areas of concern were immediately raised by the Infant Feeding in Emergencies Core Group:
• Mothers of newborn infants needed support for early initiation of exclusive breastfeeding taking into account the reality that some mothers would be forced to give birth amongst the ruins and on the side of the road.
• Infants whose mothers have died or been seriously injured needed an assessment of the response options, for example wet nursing, or as a last resort, well managed artificial feeding.
• Urgent action to prevent unsolicited donations of breastmilk substitutes (BMS) and manage those already being sent when
they arrived. From early media reports, large donations of infant formula/milk powder were being requested from many sources and despatched to Haiti”.
If the EQ had been a little worse in Canterbury imagine what could have happened. Contaminated water supplies by sewage breaches or chemical spills or no water? No electricity to boil water and no way of safely reconstituting infant formula powder or sterilising or cleaning equipment for bottle-feeding. Formula fed babies would have been at risk of serious illness. The dairy industry is currently contributing to making water supplies less safe too, in a non-emergency situation, with E Coli threats and also the nitrate issue. Excess nitrates can cause a condition in infants called ‘blue baby syndrome’ where the oxygen carrying capacity of red blood cells is dangerously compromized causing methemoglobinemia … and on it goes …
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I think some are confusing milk powder with baby formula.
Those milk powder biscuits that are distributed to disaster areas are life savers.
The debate about the demerits of baby formula is a different debate to the the best use of resources to earn our overseas funds.
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But Owen, baby formula is milk powder just with some cereal mixed in. Interesting that most of the world could well do without baby formula. They’d likely be better off healthwise. It’d be interesting to know what proportion of NZ milk powder exports are for feeding babies…. It’s very relevant if so much of the extra demand for energy & water in NZ is for a product that’s not very helpful. Yes I know it earns $$, but the cost …..
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ok, fixed
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Yeah… looks like a real reliable power source to prevent peak-oil reality from setting in…
http://www.businessinsider.com/marcellus-shale-disappointment-2010-10#ixzz13swIX0ql
…not.
BJ
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Frog
We’ll be the judge of that !
YES! Well done.
respectfully
BJ
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A stock analyst could write a similar analysis about windfarms.
There is overselling in just about any energy related sector.
The counter point article is more about the resource and less about the stock behaviour.
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Owen
Not sure that the overselling in the case of the Wind Farm is quite the same… it is obvious to anyone that a windfarm is gathering a diffuse energy source and sites are not interchangeable and all the other disadvantages that apply.
This points more at a surprise offered to the investors in these gas plays over the past couple of years… and a very much higher price to extract it than was anticipated.
It is relatively easy to do due-diligence on a wind farm… the nature of the gas bearing substrate appears to have been a surprise, even to those who tried to do that.
Otherwise.. I don’t really disagree. The energy sector does get oversold and windfarms are as subject to that as any resource… the advantage to them is that the expenses are pretty much predictable – fixed price. Do the homework and you can’t get too badly hurt.
This is not in the same category.
…but wind can definitely be oversold. Panaceas do not exist.
Tanstaafl.
BJ
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Back again with more about infant formula, milk powder, milk powder biscuits, emergencies etc! Quite a large majority of the world are not accustomed to cows milk protein – this is in milk powder, infant formula powder and milk biscuits of course. In situations without clean water diarrhoea makes a massive negative contribution to infant mortality and morbidity. Milk biscuits are not the answer if you have an intolerance to cow’s milk protein and this protein makes your gut a little bit more compromised than before. Also not the answer for infants up to six months where exclusive breasteeding remains the safest way to feed, even in HIV situations, and not so great for infants from six months to one year who should be provided with energy dense foods in addition to continued breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is not ‘just’ about food it’s also about immune protection and immune system development.
In Botswana in 2005/06 – infant formula was offered to HIV infected mothers. Flooding then led to contaminated water supplies and a severe outbreak of diarrhoea and malnutrition. Under 5 mortality increased by at least 18%. Non-breastfed infants were 50 times more likely to need hospital treatment than breastfed infants and more likely to die
In 1994 the World Health Assembly highlighted the dangers of donated supplies of ANY breast-milk substitutes and bottles and teats in emergencies.
Points of agreement for infant feeding in emergencies procedures are:
1. Emphasise that breast milk is and remains the safest and best option.
2. Actively support women to breastfeed.
3. Avoid inappropriate distribution of breast-milk substitutes.
4. When necessary (following assessment) use infant formula if available. It must be targeted only to those who need it.
5. Do not distribute feeding bottles/teats; promote cup feeding
6. Do not distribute dried skim milk unless mixed with cereal
7. Add complementary foods to breastfeeding after six full months.
8. Avoid commercial complementary foods
9. Include pregnant and lactating women in supplementary feeding when general rations are insufficient
I developed a full plan for infant feeding in emergencies for Canterbury long before the EQ and I’m still waiting for someone at Civil Defense to take it further! Sent it to UNICEF NZ as well and still no response. Anyone interested in NZ that can take this further and into operational mode? I’m available for education purposes and infant feeding in disaster planning!
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Thanks Frog
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Gosh, if two dairy farms can use the same amount of electricity as a small town, then the dairy farm environmental effects and the questionable appropriateness of their product should be factored into the energy debate. For, like windfarms, the goodness of dairy also seems to perhaps be oversold.
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Gosh, if two dairy farms can use the same amount of electricity as a small town, then the dairy farm environmental effects and the questionable appropriateness of their product should be factored into the energy debate.
Good Catch !
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Frog:
Is it possible to have https access to this blog (or does it require too many computer resources)? I’m accessing this blog using Tor, and I’m not at all confident that my traffic isn’t being sniffed by a malicious exit node. Using an https server would solve this problem.
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Carol,
The issues associated with infant formula are different in New Zealand and other developed countries than in developing countries. In New Zealand, issues like mothers returning to work are important, and influence the choice to use formula (I realise that collecting breast milk for use later in the day is an option). However, by and large, the use of formula is probably not too detrimental (although not ideal).
On the other hand, in the developing world there are some quite nasty marketing practises which go hand in hand with poor education. For example, I know people who started using formula, thinking it was “best” for their baby, but they subsequently find they cannot afford it. They then revert to using watered down condensed milk and “zap” as milk for infants.
Given that New Zealand would presumably export large quantities of milk formula, one would think there needs to be some sort of regulation on how and where it is marketed?
Having said that, my daughter came home from kindergarten in Australia with a free sample sachet of Nestle infant formula. I thought this was highly unethical (presumably targetting mothers who are likely to have other younger children who are still being fed infant formula or breast milk). I was tempted to write a complaint to Nestle (but was too lazy to in the end).
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The problem for your argument is that Gerry is (astoundingly) absolutely right.
To understand why, have a read of A goal is not a strategy: Focusing efforts to improve New Zealand’s prosperity (PDF, 1MB), section four.
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Thanks for the great comments Samieula. Some issues are different between the ‘developed’ and the ‘developing’ world, for sure, but inappropriate and misleading marketing and infant formula hype happens everywhere. Not-breastfeeding is also associated with risk in developed countries too. Support for women to breastfeed is often what is missing everywhere. In NZ – it goes without saying that breastfeeding should be accepted as normal and workplaces and early childhood education services should be mother-parent-infant child and breastfeeding friendly (ECEs are now targeted by the infant formula industry as you have found out – in NZ too) but supportive environments are not the case in the majority of situations. New research from Payne et al., In Auckland identifies the dilemma between trying to breastfeed and feel like a “good mother” and the tensions between this and being the “good worker”. Breastfeeding women try and cause as little disruption as possible in the workplace, compromise their well-being, and then the massive amount of ‘work’ involved in trying to juggle work and breastfeeding remains invisible. Breastfeeding/expressing is likely to stop. 90-94% of women start breastfeeding in NZ but by six weeks after birth only around 54% are still exclusively breastfeeding – the rest have introduced formula – at three months we are down to 35% exclusive and at six months 12%. Women often say they wish they could have breastfed for longer. Certainly for women’s health this is particularly crucial as breastfeeding confers some protection, from breast and ovarian cancer, heart disease and osteoporosis but this is has been found to be dose dependent in research. Two years and above of lifetime duration (adding all your breastfeeding durations together with each infant) is protective. You can see above how many women are getting this protection. We are good at promotion and not so good at support and protection of breastfeeding. For many women breastfeeding duration is linked to paid parental leave duration. Would LOVE to see longer paid parental leave back on the political agendas! Please! Also some attention paid to women who do not currently meet the criteria for paid parental leave. If a woman chooses to go back to work let’s see supportive workplaces and ECE services. It’s no happy accident that Scandinavian countries have great breastfeeding rates, better health and a good length of paid parental leave. George Monbiot used to think things were different in developed countries as opposed to developing countries then he found out a few more details. Check out Monbiot’s blog for the first entry here http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/06/05/breast-beating/ which identifies some disturbing issues happening (and still happening in fact) in the Philippines. Then check the second blog post here http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/06/19/not-what-it-says-on-the-tin/
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Gerry Brownlee comments may be true (what a sad and unhealthy world we live in where we think that milk from an abused, over-used other-mammal or a quick fix pill from a pharmaceutical giant can fix everything) but they remain disturbing as they do indicate an unawareness of the crucial contribution of breastfeeding to well child health and the association of not breastfeeding with unwell-child-ill-health Are we to take from Mr Brownlee’s statement that infants and young children globally are now a form of collateral damage secondary to profits?
Ex-National Party MP in New Zealand, Marilyn Waring, as long ago as 1988, wrote about the failure to include reproductive functions and breastfeeding in terms of their economic value, a failure to count women’s work as being of value in fact (Counting for Nothing, Wellington: Allen & Unwin). Smith & Ingham in 2001 also contributed to this important body of work by highlighting how economic production is underestimated when GDP measurements exclude the value of unpaid work. (Breastfeeding and the measurement of economic progress, Journal of Australian Political Economy, 48:51-72). Waring was also attempting to draw attention to the degradation of natural assets arising from the additional production of animal milk supplies and the costs to the land arising from this accelerated production and depletion of natural assets.
Kevin Frick, an American health economist, suggests that when determining costs in the area of infant and young child nutrition, “the cost of the goods used to produce nutrition, time used to produce nutrition and costs or risks associated with various ways of providing nutrition” require evaluation. Frick suggests an economic evaluation tool critical for analysing breastfeeding and infant nutrition. A ‘cost-consequence’ analysis provides the tool for describing costs and benefits and when utilised alongside a ‘cost of illness’ study this assists with understanding lifetime costs associated with ill health conditions (Use of economics to analyse policies to promote breastfeeding’, in F Dykes & V. H Moran, Infant and Young Child Feeding: Challenges to implementing a global strategy, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd). Frick also explains that a market operating within a perfect competitive model would be a market producing a uniformly nutritious infant formula product at minimum cost regardless of the manufacturer of the goods. Monopolistic competition results in a market not operating efficiently to provide goods at a minimum cost, with the ‘benefits’ to infants and families of a broad range of products (pretty well all making misleading health and nutrition claims) as being unclear.
We will not achieve global child heath targets without breastfeeding protection and support, which of course involves appropriate and contextual support for women to breastfeed, and protection from inappropriate and misleading marketing of infant formula products. The World Health Organisation’s (and the New Zealand MOHs) optimal infant feeding recommendations include six months of exclusive breastfeeding. Currently on the WHO databank of 65% of the world’s infant population (which covers 94 countries) only 35% of infants are exclusively breastfed at the age of three months (WHO Nutrition Data Bank. https://apps.who.int/nut/db_bfd.htm). Breastfeeding continuance up to at least one year and beyond is also considered optimal in New Zealand and globally it is recommended to two years and beyond, as the mother wishes.
Current research in the HIV context also strongly continues to highlight the importance of exclusive breastfeeding for infants, even with HIV positive mothers, so HIV does not provide a ‘need’ for infant formula products either in the vast majority of situations.
As many as 1.45 million infant lives are estimated to be lost due to suboptimal breastfeeding in ‘developing countries’ (Lauer, J. A., Betran, A. P., Barros, A. J. D., & de Onis, M. (2006) Deaths and years of life lost due to suboptimal breast-feeding amongst children in the developing world: A global ecological risk assessment, Public Health Nutrition, 9, 6: 673-685). Interrupted breastfeeding and inappropriate complementary feeding heighten the risk of malnutrition, illness and mortality. Stuebe & Schwarz (2009) also confirmed that infant feeding decisions significantly affect mother-child health outcomes globally, even in settings with clean water and good sanitation. Not-breastfed infants are exposed to increased risk of infections and non-infectious morbidity and mortality (The risks and benefits of infant feeding practices for women and their children. Journal of Perinatology, 1: 1-8).
Very few people seem to have joined the dots when it comes to dairy industry expansion and the global link to poor infant and child health outcomes. If the infant formula category grows each year then this represents a significant growing number of infants, who either experience a total lack of breastfeeding, and the immunologic, developmental and nutritional advantages this bestows, and/or infants who have their breastfeeding duration shortened, or who have premature loss of exclusivity protection.
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Failed to notice a comment elsewhere, but its relevant, so….
On the 30th, in a different thread, I said:
Valis notes:
I’m not going to argue a word of what you say there, Valis, its all true, but ultimately, you’ve drawn up a wishlist, a bunch of things that would be sensible to do. Terms like “calling for”, “we need a”, “what we really need”.
Which is nice. But none of it is available today as an alternative to burning more coal. Unlike Huntly, which actually exists, and is ready to rock. And unless we get a wiggle on and build more renewables, Huntly wont be end-of-life’d in a few years; they’ll patch it up, shove the resource consents through under urgency (“strategic national asset”), and guess what – burn more coal.
So I respectfully disagree your assessment of my post as “crap” – its absolutely bang on the money.
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For those following the dairy power threadette: Where I live (North Canty) is mostly rural, and the local lines company, Mainpower, in their asset planning publication [link] (PDF 4MB) note that:
There then follows a table, of 18 major measurement points, of which 8 are now summer peaking. Time was when they would all have peaked in the winter.
Dairying uses a lot of electricity for irrigation in North Canterbury.
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Interesting data. Power lines across the plains south of the Waimakariri have recently been replaced with a very much more substantial line to supply dairy farm irrigation up the plains.
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That may not be the case; in our district Mainpower are replacing older, thinner lines with more substantive lines to reduce snow and ice damage. They would almost certainly need to add more substations, or upscale existing stations to deliver more power.
Mainpower are upgrading all coductors to ‘ferret’ with ‘squirrel’ being removed from service. Quite how cables got to be named after furry animals I have no idea…
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Owen, wouldn’t the hydroelectric system be adequate?
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So I respectfully disagree your assessment of my post as “crap” – its absolutely bang on the money.
I was reacting to your claim that Greens are impractical in opposing the Mok dam, which is false. I used Kevin’s post as an example. Sure, mine is a wish list, but no less than your own, really, because damming the Mok isn’t going to keep any coal in the ground. Like I said, we could dam all the rivers and the coal would still be dug up, because Solid Energy doesn’t care what Meridian does.
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WITHOUT PAYING ANY GST.
I know that I have left my comment late but huge amounts of capital is going into windfarms mainly so that big corporations can monopolise alternative energy.
If it was really to liberate us from the tyranies of the environment and our power bills then we would be able to purchase reasonably priced wind turbines and solar panels at places like Mitre 10 to attach to our homes, without PAYING ANY GST!!!!!!!
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I would have thought Owen’s brand new Audi (times 100,000) might suffice as a reasonable store of energy to buffer the ups and downs of a nationally spread network of windfarms. And if there hadn’t been enough wind by or forecast to charge his car by, say 3am, then perhaps it would be time to stoke up the (sun dried) biomass generator for a few hours or days. I’m sure it can be done and that the 10-15% is not in fact a practical limit, just the point where things start getting a little more complicated.
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This is funny but kinda sad as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CC_9aFuEkA&feature=player_embedded
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Carol,
Thank you for the interesting links on infant formula.
It strikes me there are a number of problems.
On one hand, there is a lot of evidence supporting the benefits of breast feeding. On the other hand, infant formula can play a life saving role when the mother is unable to breast feed (it happens, even when the mother desperately would like to breast feed). So treating it as a medical issue, one might say a sensible thing would be to make infant formula a prescription medicine, and maybe even subsidise it for mothers who cannot breast feed for medical reasons.
However, the counter-argument would go something along the lines that by restricting infant formula to those mothers who have medical reasons to use it takes away an important choice mothers can make, and may restrict a mothers options for doing things such as work.
Its a complicated issue …
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An extreme but apparently effective example, not yet verified: To address the problem of babies being fed formula, I heard that Papua New Guinea just banned baby feeding bottles!! If a mother actually physically couldn’t feed her baby, only then was she provided with something. The misleading marketing, free samples, etc make it such an uneven playing field, that a heavy hand was the option implemented. If a few more countries did that successfully & positively, it might sober our milk powder industry a little.
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http://whoar.co.nz/2010/alcohol-is-more-harmful-than-crack-or-heroinecstasy-which-has-had-much-harm-related-media-attention-over-the-past-two-decades-is-only-one-eighth-as-harmful-as-alcohol/
“…In an Article published in the Lancet, the drug expert presents a new way of measuring drug damage that assesses both harm to the individual and harm to the rest of society.
His analysis shows that when both factors are combined, alcohol is the most damaging drug, followed by heroin and crack.
The paper is written by Professor Nutt, of Imperial College London, and the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, Dr Leslie King, UK Expert Adviser to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction …
… and Dr Lawrence Phillips, London School of Economics and Political Science.
The new assessment used nine categories of harm to the self and seven to society as a whole.
The “harm to self” categories cover mortality, poor health, impaired mental functioning, loss of friendships and injury.
The “harm to others” categories include crime, environmental damage, family conflict and decline in community cohesion.
Heroin, crack, and crystal meth were the most harmful drugs to the individual, whereas alcohol, heroin, and crack were the most harmful to others.
The modelling showed that as well as being the most harmful drug overall, alcohol is almost three times as harmful as cocaine or tobacco.
It also showed that alcohol is more than five-times more harmful than mephedrone, which was recently a so-called legal high in the UK before it was made a class B controlled drug in April 2010.
Ecstasy, which has had much harm-related media attention over the past two decades …
… is only one eighth as harmful as alcohol in this new analysis…” (cont..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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john-ston
A good question.
As I recall the range I mentioned of 1% to 15% reflects the contribution of hydro to stabilisation.
So if you have no hydro then the back up requirement kicks in at say 10% and if you have hydro – as we do – it kicks in around 15%.
So the hydro system addresses the back up problem but does not solve it.
One reason some Scandinavian countries have high percentage of wind power, much off shore, because they just buy their back up from nuclear facilities in France etc. The East West spread of Europe means peak loads are spread around the clock. So one nations slack load can supply a neighbours peak demand.
New Zealand’s North South spread makes it more difficult and it seems unlikely that we can rotate NZ through ninety degrees.
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Mudfish
YOu are quite right. A large fleet of electric cars makes all manner of exchanges possible.
From memory one quarter of the Californian vehicle fleet ≠ if all electric – could power up the California grid in an emergency. The cars become the equivalent of cloud computing only as storage.
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Once wind is contributing more than say 10 to 15% of load then every new kw of wind generation must be backed up with some other source. This backup power is hugely expensive because the generators sit doing nothing for much of the time and kick in only when the wind doesn’t blow
Yeah Owen, that’s the standard rant against wind repeated ad-infinitum by the bush league fools out there in the USA who simply hate the idea that we should do anything about anything anywhere.
The problem with this is that until you have matched every erg of generated dispatchable power you already possess, you aren’t installing “new” capacity, and you ARE saving water behind dams, or gas that doesn’t have to be burned in turbines… or coal in the ground.
Which makes the argument as disingenuous as they come. Somewhere between a lie and a damned lie in terms of the argument about the USEFULNESS of wind. Which inclines me to reckon that you were being a little less than your usually thoughtful and critical self.
It’s true, the non-dispatchable power of wind has to be backed by dispatchable sources, but we’ve already build a sh!tload of those sources, and saving those for when the wind isn’t blowing makes the wind we build pretty near 100% useful until we have matched and begun to exceed the hydro and gas generation within grid-reach of the wind. Coal and Geo aren’t fully dispatchable… (don’t spin up fast enough, and so are only suitable for baseload), but even they to a degree, can be saved through a combination of wind and dispatchable sources… though the point to saving geo capacity is completely unknown to me
respectfully
BJ
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Another notable risk with formula is secondary milk allergies… in which babies are actually allergic to the digestion by-products of milk, with reactions that are basically stomach cramps and diarrhea 2-3 hours after a feed.
Hit that one first-hand.
I am no fan of formula… and never did like cows milk, although in my later years I worked out that it was sort of OK if I added it to chocolate or honey. Funny how most things are OK if they are added to chocolate or honey
BJ
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With wind generation distributed around the country the chances of it being calm in all the locations at once is just about nil.
Say if you had 40% wind power in 4 separated locations at least two would have enough for generation at any given time. Reserves of about 15% would be fine. Existing hydro power would cope as reserve with no problems.
There may be a rare occasion when high demand and a big high combine, but we cope with grid outages now for various reasons.
A true smart grid can shed load in a way that causes the least disruption.
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There is overwhelming research evidence in favour of breastfeeding. Breastmilk has evolved to become the material that human babies need for development and survival. Breastfeeding doesn’t have any benefits however – it’s just normal. There’s a general move amongst infant, child and maternal health advocates to change terminology – rather than the benefits of breastfeeding it’s the risks of not breastfeeding and the risks associated with infant formula usage. 96% of women can breastfeed; it’s a very small % of women who are unable to breastfeed – more popular misconceptions. If 96% of women were supported to breastfeed this means that the current growth of dairy for infant formula would be unnecessary. The only reason it is being pushed, why some countries almost have market saturation of infant formula and why breastfeeding is being destroyed is for the same reason the natural resources of forests and land are being destroyed – for immediate profit. Infant formula can play a life-saving role – no question – that was initially why it was created – but inappropriate marketing has changed all that. Women have always gone back to work in most countries but either taken their babies with them or had sisters or aunts to care for their children and wet-nurse. The WHO hierarchy of infant feeding ‘choices’ starts with breastfeeding with your own mother, then breastmilk from the mother if breastfeeding is not possible, followed by breastmilk from another human mother – infant formula is at the bottom of the list. Donor milk is used in many countries. The HIV virus is can be inactivated in a pan of water on the top of a stove/fire. The ‘Pretoria method’ works fine. Pasteurisation of human donor milk also inactivates viruses – that’s what most donor milk banks in the world do after taking gifts of donor milk from screened women. Norway just securely screens women and does not pasteurise donor milk. By the way – donor milk sent to the scene of a disaster is not useful – just as infant formula is not – the same logistical nightmares exist – keeping it safe, refrigeration and transport.
A World Health Assembly Resolution in 2010, item 11.6 (the resolutions keep the International Code of Marketing Breast-Milk Substitutes up to date) states as an aim: To end inappropriate promotion of food for infants and young children and to ensure that nutrition and health claims shall not be permitted for foods for infants and young children. The Code is about stopping unethical marketing and false and misleading health claims and not about banning formula. Parents/mothers are targeted by industry which has a MASSIVE budget for this (did you read Monbiot? – US$100 million per year spent on advertising breast milk substitutes in the Philippines which is over half the Dept of Health’s annual total budget for everything). Why would you keep going with breastfeeding, or giving breastmilk, even when you go back to paid work, when you think that breastfeeding is easily replaced and formula is close, closest and even closer now to breastmilk? A selection of claims – supports sensitive eyes, supports brain and eye development, supports oxygen transport and growth, supports immunity and healthy digestive systems, clever antioxidants. Prescription only is not the answer and women/mothers/parents should never be the ‘target’ for criticism about their feeding decisions. We should be targeting industry, regulators, the government and the systems that allow this global disaster to happen. Relationships with inequalities of power incur a special ethical responsibility in regard to the more vulnerable party – that means corporations-consumers and governments-citizens; particularly vulnerable citizens. Remember what Friedman said in 1962 – “The only social responsibility of business is to make a profit so long as it stays within the rules of the game which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception and fraud” – we’re well into deception times now at a massive cost to health and the planet.
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Kerry
Your presumptions seem reasonable but have proved wrong in practise.
I am getting my information from a power generation engineer, and expert who spends most of his time overseas advising emerging nations on energy policy and who operates a significant mini hydro plant in NZ of his own.
Wind has a role but it is limited by the basic physics and behaviour of climate.
The Europeans and UK have found this out already and are winding back their projected wind farms.
Many “cures” are available but all come at a cost. And reliability and entropy are important factors is those extra costs.
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Again the fallacies of the 15% “limit” – the way to deal with interriptable generation like wind is to have instant demand management.
This hasn’t been done on a grid scale before, but there is no reason it cant be done; many micro-hydro plants arrange the load so that the generator is under constant mechanical load, so the frequency stays constant. The excess power is dumped into water heating or once that’s used up, into dump resistors. We know how to match demand to supply, we just haven’t done it on a big scale – yet. We’re still just matching supply to demand…
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I’d have no problems with making infant formula only available with a doctor’s prescription. The stuff is a less than ideal substitute for breast milk, its a big effort to keep-the bottles etc sterilised, and its expensive.
Couple restriction of infant formula with more mother and baby friendly work places etc, and the need for infant formula should not be too great.
But, and this is the big but, I’m a man and will never need to breast feed. What do women think about restrictions on the use of infant formula?
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At the end of the day, though, infant formula is a legal product, and if there is a global market for it and if we could transition to manufacturing the stuff rather than commodity milk and export it then that would be good for New Zealand.
If there are questions about whether we should be using the stuff ourselves, that’s a different matter, and a matter incidental to the issues of the export policy of the country.
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Hmmph… invented a new term I did. “Grid reach”. The limitations of the power grid to redistribute power are important, and we cannot afford to rely so completely on that redistribution capability. Not if we see solar storms every few hundred years.
So a smart and flexible grid makes things better, but given the wind distribution characteristics and distances involved, it is unlikely to really make enough difference to obviate the requirements for local storage of energy. This is, as Gerrit and I have both noted, the really nasty-difficult problem of energy.
Using excess to create hydrogen at least gives us a storage mechanism, not subject to chemical degradation if it is mechanically separated from the rest of the atmosphere (which is possible) but always subject to potentially sudden degradation if there is any failure of that separation… Adding a carbon or nitrogen atom to some of that h2 gives methane, or ammonia, easier to store – and such use, however inefficient it is to start with, helps to balance loads.
Most of human history has contained the energy storage back-story which means it determines far more than most humans realize… and if there were any single thing I would want to concentrate on (apart from Satellite Solar) it is this.
BJ
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I agree that hydrogen for energy storage isn’t very efficient. However in New Zealand we already have two sites manufacturing hydrogen for use on site – both from methane (Natural Gas). One is the ammonia / urea plant and the other is the oil refinery. Using surplus electricity to generate hydrogen at these plants saves the gas and reduces CO2 emissions and gives a paying customer for the surplus electricity which helps persuade the builders of wind farms to keep building them. The hydrogen manufacture can be turned off very quickly if the wind drops and the power is needed elsewhere.
Trevor.
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Owen.
No one type of generation is going to replace gas and coal.
Using UK and Europe as an example for NZ does not work however.
NZ has far more constant and stronger average winds than the UK or most of Europe.
Only South Canterbury has long periods of calm.
Most of our present generation 80% is sustainable already. Europe’s offset generation is either brown coal or nuclear. Both expensive.
A reserve is always required for unexpected demand or failures in the grid or generation. Not much more is needed for wind backup.
A truly smart grid load sheds preferentially. I.E. Can stop power to dishwashers while leaving it on for a heat pump.
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There are already a number of ways of storing electricity at utility level. Pumped hydro storage is one but has geographical restrictions, needing hills and water. Vanadium flow batteries are an expensive option but very responsive (milliseconds) and already in use on King Island for smoothing demand and supply from their wind farm. Flywheel storage is also expensive but has good peak power ratings (suits backup power for shutting down server farms gracefully). A new one is the “gravel battery”, literally storing energy in stones, using big reversible heat pumps.
The standard lead-acid battery is not as good as these other options, which have much lower ongoing costs.
Trevor.
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Most of the hydro power stations have much higher peak capacities than their input flow sustains, and we can add to this peak capacity if required, using larger penstocks, turbines and generators. The expensive bit – the dam – doesn’t need to be replaced. Therefore it is relatively simple to backup wind power with hydro generation. We have most of what we need now. We don’t need to build gas-fired peaking power stations unless the transmission grid restricts us from using South Island hydro to meet North Island peaks.
Trevor.
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With present technology storing hydrogen is not a goer. Its energy density per unit volume is very low, it leaks through just about anything and it is highly explosive.
Hydro is still our best storage medium. The other option is to have enough different types of distributed generation that we are not dependent on any one source.
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Kerry – I wasn’t really suggesting using hydrogen as a way of storing energy, although storage of half a day’s production would be useful. Rather I was suggesting storing hydrogen because it is needed by industrial processes, namely the manufacture of ammonia and splitting heavy hydrocarbons.
Hydrogen itself is not highly explosive. It is only explosive when mixed with air or oxygen, as is CNG, LPG, petrol and a number of other common materials – even flour dust. The difference is that if you let hydrogen out of the bottle, it disappears rapidly as it is much lighter than air. Most other highly flammable materials sink where they can pool and are more likely to be ignited.
If it is not being used in a vehicle, containment isn’t a major problem, just needing thicker walls and other simple precautions.
Trevor.
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Having multiple intermittent sources of power is better than relying on one intermittent source but for a reliable supply, we need enough non-intermittent sources to meet our peak needs. Hydro and geothermal will be our main sources. Having some extra storage to smooth the demand peaks will help.
Using multiple intermittent source reduces but does not eliminate the probability that all sources will have a trough in generation when it is really needed. For a reliable supply, planning needs to be based on all of these sources being unavailable, although we can assume that demand won’t have unexpectedly high peaks at the same time, along with a major outage. (Planning uses an N-1 strategy.)
Trevor.
Trevor.
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Answering a few comments that came up today. Talking about making infant formula available on prescription only, outrages a large number of people – parents/mothers. There is a sense that this is targeting women unfairly when they make a decision to bottle-feed infant formula. Then we get into the unhelpful ‘mummy wars’ where women feel that people are making judgements about their mothering choices and get understandably upset and angry. Again the most crucial point is that we should not be targeting women but the systems that make it difficult to breastfeed. Remembering that 90-94% of women start breastfeeding in NZ – this seems to signify that a good number of women want to breastfeed plus a good percentage wish they had been able to breastfeed for longer.
The other issue is about misleading marketing – yet again – there should be one nutritionally adequate, as safe as possible, infant formula product available without GM ingredients, without novel ingredients, without health claims, close/closer to breastmilk claims and ‘superior ‘nutrition claims. We do not require the bewildering range of products marketed and produced with the aim of attracting buyers and they certainly do not need them anywhere else in the world either. The vulnerability of infants makes the usual marketing practices unsuitable.
The global market for infant formula illustrates the success of a clever exercise in manufacturing demand for products and an undermining of breastfeeding. Most non-Western cultures have been breastfeeding cultures until recently– look at China for example– a robust breastfeeding culture until the mid 1990s and now what has happened? Breastfeeding almost destroyed to the detriment of infant, young child and maternal health and markets being flooded with infant formula powder.
Manufactured demand works well by misleading, seducing and scaring. Lack of a breastfeeding culture in most countries is the legacy of decades of commercial marketing of infant formula. Yes, manufacturing more and more milk formula powder may be great for the NZ economy (short-term) but it’s unethical to do this when we know the realities of where the milk is going and the tragedy it is causing. In the Philippines 70% of people have inadequate access to clean water and 16,000 Filipino children die each year as a result of inappropriate feeding practices. Check out parts 1-5 of ‘Formula for Disaster’ on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNYDPKQOVUE or at least watch part one. Infant formula feeding absolutely represents a dangerous way to feed babies in many countries.
I’m sorry but I don’t think that anything is worth more than people, and we should care deeply about the fate of infants and children. Economics as though people mattered is what E.F Schumacher spoke about in 1974 and he also said that ‘nothing makes economic sense unless its continuance for a long time can be projected without running into absurdities’. The continued dairy boom is absurd and non-sustainable. Dairy causes land damage, wastes and contaminates water and contaminates aquifers. I’d like to think that we do not consider infants and young children as some sort of collateral damage secondary to economic growth.
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We could use electrolysis, and Trevor correctly points out that there are already plants that could use it in forming Ammonia or for the refining of petroleum. The refinery could certainly be given Sabatier and/or Fischer-Tropsch components.
The chemical storage of energy is more basic than the building of batteries for storage… and the real point here is that we can balance loads to absorb large surplus capacities in terms of wind, and profit in terms of energy when we do so.
Not storing energy in H2 molecules but to use it as feed to store energy in some more convenient form.
BJ
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Diahorrea! – whomever invented that word deserves a medal – not necessarily Bronze.
Speaking of which ; I’ve come up with a way to Save The World from global warming at only $5 per person.
Please send money to Briefcase Investments
GPO Don Key
Wgtn (iluvyrcold)
thanks very ta…
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Trevor. I agree with your other posts apart from using hydrogen as a storage medium. The energy density and cost of production makes it one of the last options with present technology.
Eg. The best use is as a transport fuel. Converting electricity to hydrogen for a storage medium for electricity has no advantages over simpler options. The energy required to compress and store hydrogen as a transport fuel. Uncompressed hydrogen occupies too much volume to be transportable. http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/hydrogen.html
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If hydrogen is stored in fixed tanks, then no great compression is needed – the tanks can simply be larger. Fixed sites don’t have the same space limits as vehicles.
I am not advocating storing hydrogen for conversion back to electricity – the cycle efficiencies are very poor, in the area of 50%. What I am suggesting is making and storing the hydrogen in times of high supply and low demand of electricity, for use later as hydrogen, e.g. for refineries, ammonia production or gas hobs for cooking, or other applications requiring high temperatures. This then provides an additional load for the wind farms that can be turned off rapidly if the wind drops or the power is needed elsewhere.
Trevor.
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No discussion about the New Zealand energy scene would be complete without a mention of the aluminium smelter. New Zealand’s smelter is unusual in that it runs at full power 24/7. Most smelters run on off-peak power only. We could change the smelter to use off peak power which would give 540MW of manageable demand. More realistically, we could change 1 pot line to use off peak power, giving 180MW of manageable demand. The other two pot lines could continue to run as they do now – full time but with the possibility of being shut down for a few months during dry years. We could even consider adding a forth pot line to use surplus night-time power which would restore the production capacity to the current levels or higher, and which would add to the demand that can be switched off when the wind stops blowing.
Of course wind power is not the only intermittent power we might choose to use. We also have run-of-river power generation and we are starting to see solar generation and the first wave and tidal powered systems. All of these will be able to take advantage of managed demand, which can prop up the price of electricity during demand troughs. Even geothermal power can gain from more managed demand.
To answer an earlier question from BJ, geothermal power stations can be usefully throttled back during times when intermittent generation meets the demand if and only if the installed geothermal power generation exceeds the sustainable geothermal resource. This already happens at Contact’s Poihapi (sp?) Road plant.
Trevor.
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Currently the electricity prices are determined by the cost of the generation at the margin, which is usually a gas-fired power station. As oil prices rise, gas prices here will also rise as people switch from oil to gas for various purposes. However this makes renewables more attractive and eventually we will have enough renewable generation to not need the gas generation at all for significant periods. When that happens, the price of electricity will cease rising as much as the price of gas and oil so for longer periods, the electricity prices will be lower. Then we will start to see a different phenomenum – the price of electricity will no longer be pushed up by the price of the gas used to generate it but be pulled up by the price of gas that it can be used to replace.
In any case, the price of electricity will not rise as much as gas and the consumers will see a benefit from the investments in renewables.
In the long term, the electricity prices may even fall in real terms in New Zealand as the costs of solar photovoltaics and wind turbines fall with economies of scale and research and development.
Trevor.
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