How to use the fuel of 75 trucks to move 306 truck loads:

Now let’s see, would business rather pay the wages of 2 people on the train, or 306 truck drivers???? Duh!

Rail = Good.
Trucks = Yuck.

Maybe technology can save us from our obscene reliance on foreign oil and it’s crippling costs after all? Could we use this newfangled thingamy to do the long haul stuff, and save the precious expensive truck fuel for the local deliveries?

The efficiency with which the financial markets (and now the real economy) are fleecing the taxpayers to pay for their own excesses is astounding. Now our government is saying that in order to prevent collapse, we need more of the same policies that got us here in the first place.

I am convinced. The “free” market really is efficient! 

Speaking at the Oxfam Climate Change Debate, Smith was pressured by Minister Parker as to whether National would keep the fund. After several blustery answers, the audience and Jeanette got into the act, demanding that Smith answer the question. Finally, the old fossil caved in and admitted that the fund would go.

When pressed as to his reasons for killing the fund, Smith blustered (paraphrased) ¨We wont guarantee anything agreed between Labour and the Greens.”

What Smith revealed is what I have suspected all along. We are hearing many soothing words from the front bench of National in the lead up to the election about how they have changed their ways and how they plan to keep so many of this governmentś programmes. In the usual pattern, it is in a moment of rare honesty that we see that the leopard has not changed his spots at all. Itś the same old plan from the same old party. Slash and burn.

We need to invest in the infrastructure of the future, which includes warm, dry homes for all New Zealanders while the cold winds of global recession blow through the land. How better to prepare for this recesion, peak oil and climate change than to get every home in NZ properly insulated?

Hereś the proposed DBH calculator to be used to see if your proposed NEW, LARGE dwelling complies with the new energy efficiency standard for hot water. (No BluePeter, this does not apply to your retrofit, although your retrofit cannot make the efficiency worse than it was before you started. However, you do not have to meet the new code.) This calculator allows for a bewildering choice of technologies and combinations in putting a hot water system together. Only in the absolute worst case, when the hot water cylinder is the most inefficient type, would you need a 6 litre/min shower head. No plumber worth his salt would be doing it that way in any case, so the point is almost moot.

Where we come unstuck, and where Smith and Co. have done a real good job of misinformation, is with the Acceptable Solution. Acceptable Solutions are the lazy manś way of complying to the H1 Building Code. They offer a worst case, rule of thumb guide for those who either cannot or will not use the free calculator. Here is the proposed Acceptable Solution document that DBH is consulting on and which has been falsely called a regulation. Section 5.2 is for the lazy man who cannot be bothered using the calculator. For this reason, the compliance table uses the worst case data from the calculator and says – Beat that! Itś this worst case scenario that Smith and Co. are erroneously calling the new nanny state regulation.

Here are some facts to digest:

80% of all hot water used in homes goes for showers

Out of approximately 1.6 million homes in NZ, 460,000 have high pressure water systems.

This means that  71% of existing homes already have a low-flow shower! (And they are not complaining either.)

If just a third of the high pressure systems in NZ were to switch to a high efficiency shower head of between 6 and 9 litres/min, they would each save on average 1500 kWhs per year, or about $300. They would also collectively save enough power each year to run the entire city of Nelson for that same year. This is not small peanuts. And we don’t need to go to 6 litre/min shower heads to do it!

Kevyn, – my briefing on the $148m saved on power bills since the MEPs came in was an oral one but you could write to EECA and ask for the evidence. (Note that this was not about cars, but about standards for appliances.)

samiam – yes, we are working on the HERS funding and accreditation issues. It always was a “pilot” to be refined as we learned.

Kevyn – the Government’s proposed vehicle fuel efficiency standard of 170g/km carbon by 2015 is published in the NZ Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy 2007 and you will find papers about it here on the MOT website – they are leading the policy development, not EECA.

- yes, mandatory fuel efficiency labeling came in April this year. That’s a very good start as it gives consumers information but it’s not the same as a standard.

How would the Green Party set such a standard? (Strings, please give your vote pause for thought.)

First, the standard is for cars entering the country. You can’t do anything about the fuel efficiency of the cars already here other than keep them well tuned (which actually can achieve quite a bit in some cases.)

The objective is to increase the efficiency of the cars coming into the country, and so progressively raise the efficiency of the whole fleet as less efficient cars are eventually retired out the other end. It’s a slow process, which is why it is important to start soon and start bold.

There are 2 ways to do it: a Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFÉ) standard, which the US has had for many years, where importers or manufacturers have to meet the standard as an average across all their sales. Trading of overs and unders between firms is possible and desirable. It tends to increase the price of gas guzzlers and reduce the price of highly efficient cars, but as a market reaction rather than a regulation. The US stuffed up (or rather gave in to the car manufacturing lobby) and excluded light trucks so everyone just bought pickups instead of cars to evade the rule. I’ve seen them in Seattle – you can park my car in the tray and it would rattle around. They never pick up anything but a dog, two flags and two guns. But they are parked on all the streets while their owners do the shopping. It is easier here with no local manufacturing lobby, though the importers’ lobby is strong enough.

The other way is to set the average and charge every car that is worse than that a fee on registration, which pays for every car that is better to get a rebate. The two should balance out and be revenue neutral for government.

The Greens don’t have a very strong preference for either – the actual design of the system is more important than which one you use. So pragmatically, we would go for whichever other parties were prepared to support. Though the feebate risks not hitting the target, as people just choose to pay instead, so my preference is for the CAFÉ standard.

Important question is, how fast would we raise the standard? We think that 170 g/km by 2015 is not good enough, when the Europeans are already at 150 now. There is plenty of choice of cars to meet that standard. We think we should plan to catch up with the Europeans over ten years (to where they wil be then, not to where they are now) which is quite a stretch, but our kids won’t thank us for a country full of gas guzzlers when oil hits $500 bbl and when they could have had a country full of cars they can afford to run. And then there’s climate change, of course.

This sort of reminds me of National’s response to Jeanette’s Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act 2000. They decried it as totally unnecessary and a waste of taxpayer’s money. Surely the market alone can ensure that all businesses and homes will achieve optimum efficiency? Hardly. The Electricity Commission’s KEMA report shows that there is at least 16% in economic energy efficiency potential in both the residential and commercial sectors. Money just lying on the floor. So much for free market efficiency.

So now it’s my turn for a question. How much did John Key/National pay their foreign handlers for the advice to attack SPARC or not to engage in the public debate about the ETS? It seems we all lose when one of the big parties back out of the public debate. If National kills off SPARC, we all lose. If National refuses to give credible answers about its ETS position, we all lose.

That’s money poorly spent Mr. Key. In fact, it’s costing the taxpayer heaps for you to talk to your foreign masters. Come home. Engage. Debate. New Zealand might just become a better place.