It’s a laudable goal to reduce our expensive dependence on foreign oil but it would be a lot smarter to invest in alternatives like better public transport, renewable electricity and sustainable alternative fuels.

Even if New Zealand is the ‘Texas of the South’, it is unlikely to benefit New Zealand. New Zealand sells itself cheaply with the forth lowest royalty rates in the world and gives subsidies and tax breaks to foreign oil companies. So there will be hardly any royalties, hardly any taxes and hardly any jobs for Kiwis, and the profits will flow offshore. We won’t pay any less for petrol at the pump if we produced more than we consumed because we are still unlikely to process it here or pay less than the international market price.

We know Kiwis face 100% of the environmental risks for only 5% of the value of the oil. The only way to massively ramp up oil production is to drill in hostile, risky environments in deep-water like the Great South Basin or the Raukumara Basin, more than 1000m down. This brings its own risks as we saw only too graphically in the Gulf of Mexico. Our clean, green brand is too valuable to put at risk from a catastrophic oil spill.

The Rena demonstrated we do not have the capacity to adequately deal with even a moderate spill let alone a deep-sea well blow-out. The tax-payer has already forked-out $25 million in costs associated with the Rena and our oil drilling insurance rules don’t even demand oil drilling companies have insurance to cover the full costs of a spill.

At a time when globally, renewable energy is surpassing fossil fuels and other governments, businesses and militaries are planning to reduce their dependence on oil, our Government isn’t even planning to start planning. But they are planning to increase it by borrowing billions to pour on uneconomic motorways.

If oil is the problem, more of the same isn’t the answer. As the International Energy Agency’s Chief Economist Fatih Birol says, ‘we should leave oil before oil leaves us’.

The report projects New Zealand’s future energy supply, demand, prices and greenhouse gas emissions but the major challenges identified in it are at odds with the Governments  ‘drill it, mine’  fossil-fuel-focused Energy Strategy.

The report acknowledges oil prices will be up, greenhouse gas emissions from energy will be up a staggering 40-50% on 1990 levels by 2030 and transport will continue to be oil dependant. This is a huge economic and environmental threat. It beggars belief that the Government continues to borrow billions to pour on uneconomic motorways when the report itself says ‘Historical travel data indicates that personal road travel is already near saturation, with little additional per capita travel likely.’ This scare money could be better spent preparing us for oil and carbon constrained world.

New Zealand’s dependence on imported oil is a huge strategic worry and should be the subject of an urgent inquiry. However unlike many governments, militaries and businesses that are planning to reduce their dependence on oil our Government won’t even plan to start planning. We have so many options in New Zealand from energy efficiency, 90%+ renewable electricity production, better public transport, walking and cycling to increase resiliency, reduce emissions and benefit the economy.

At the household level the report also says people will continue to struggle with energy bills because the price of electricity will remain higher than inflation for the next 18 years.

There is some good news in the report including promising renewable electricity production and New Zealand’s energy intensity is forecast to improve 21 per cent by 2030 however many of the challenges forecast in the report will just worsen given the Government’s Energy Strategy.

The Chair of PEPANZ appears almost breathless with excitement as he seeks to fulfil the primary objective of his organisation, “to publicise, promote and advance the interests of the oil and gas exploration industry in New Zealand”.

The East Coast, we are told, has been only ‘lightly explored’.  In fact there have been  surveys done of the area’s onshore and offshore potential since at least the 1970s, and the likely existence of  reserves recognised, albeit in a number of discreet fields rather than one large single reserve. All that has changed is that in the face of declining reserves of cheap, readily accessible oil and gas elsewhere, the industry is moving to ‘frontier’ areas with  a much higher risk profile than would have been contemplated even a decade ago.

Apache we are told is a ‘solid’ company, and isn’t it good that Shell are now players in the South Basin?

With a US$43 billion asset base, Apache are certainly in a position to accept some financial risk from frontier exploration, especially when our government is hanging so much of its misguided economic policy on the back of an extraction-based model worthy of 19th century robber barons.   We  New Zealanders of course will be carrying 100% of the environmental risk – it is our land, water and coastlines that could be irreparably damaged in the event of  a major accident.

And of course while it is noted that Shell has entered the fray in the South Basin, no mention is made of ExxonMobil and Todd both bailing out on the grounds of unacceptably high risk due to the harshness of  the environmental conditions and  remoteness.

Explorers apparently are not put off by protests from Greenpeace (who we are told are only in it for the headlines) nor by ‘local tribal groups’.  That sounds to me like throwing down a wero, a challenge,  one which I’m sure nga iwi o te motu will not hesitate to take up!

We are told that fresh water contamination from fracking (hydraulic fracturing) in the US has only been due to ‘cowboy’ operators cutting corners, but we need not fear for our precious water resources because the Government will ensure that no such operators will be allowed here. I wonder how our single inspector will detect the presence of cowboys, assuming they are astute enough not to turn up wearing a ten gallon hat and carrying a six-gun?  How will he or she manage to be present at every site throughout every operation to spot corner cutting?

We desperately need a government with a progressive, 21st century economic policy, based on the kind of initiatives that groups like Pure Advantage are advocating.  We need a clean green economy that works for everyone, not a backward looking ‘drill and hope’ mentality that creates so much environmental and economic risk for so little benefit.

Of passing note is the removal of any overt reference to lignite coal.  Of course bioenergy could be code for it, or ‘alternative transport fuels’ (the Energy Outlook 2010 specifically cites lignite diesel as an alternative transport fuel with potential.)

But basically the strategy is clearly bent on increasing the exploitation of oil and gas.

There are so many aspects of this strategy that are plain wrong.  First off, there is the obvious impossibility of simultaneously increasing fossil fuel production and responding effectively to the unprecedented threat of climate change.

But equally, there are the hollow claims of various immediate economic benefits the fossil strategy might bestow.  So let’s examine these:

1. We need oil and gas exploration and drilling because it will create jobs.

Two reports (commissioned by Venture Taranaki over the past 5 years) seek to quantify the economic benefits (including job creation) of the oil and gas industry in that region.

The first (PDF) is a sober, cut-and-dried analysis by BERL (Sept. ’07).  It states that there were 817 FTE employed by the entire sector in Taranaki in 2006. There are some multipliers that flow on from the industry but, overall, it was less than 2% of the workforce in the region. By comparison, over 2,000 were employed in manufacturing and well over 6,000 in dairy. There were fewer than 1,000 FTE employed in the industry throughout New Zealand that year.

Of those employed, many weren’t local. The report states:

A large portion of the oil and gas workforce are overseas experts, often with international experience.

The second report, The Wealth beneath Our Feet (2010), comes across as a PR piece extolling the virtues of the industry. It’s not clear who the authors are, or what their assumptions were, but they claim the oil and gas industry directly employed 3,730 FTEs in 2009. That’s a 400% increase in the number of people employed in the industry over just 3 years. This number keeps getting cited, and multiplied out further to be responsible for as many as 7,100 jobs in Taranaki.

However, according to Statistics NZ, the numbers haven’t changed all that muchsince 2006 (see table below).

So there are grounds to question the optimism of the second report. More importantly, we need to keep in mind the point made in the first report – many of the jobs associated with oil and gas go to overseas experts. There’s not sustainable job creation in it for New Zealanders, because once the resource is gone (or we have a catastrophic accident), there are no more jobs.

Investment in public transport, clean tech and renewable energy will also create jobs, and we have every reason to believe they will create more jobs than oil and gas.

2. We need to develop our resources so we have secure, affordable energy

Running through the Energy Strategy is the insinuation that Kiwis will benefit from affordable energy if we increase our domestic production of fossil fuels. We use a lot of oil, so we’ll be better off if we drill our own.

This is perplexing, because we don’t use any of the oil that is drilled here – we ship it offshore and import heavier crude from overseas. Even if we could refine and use the oil produced here, we would still pay the international market price for it.

There is the claim that the amount of oil we export offsets the oil we import. But New Zealand households and businesses are importing well over $6b of oil annually. Even though we’re exporting around $2b worth of oil, the Government only gets about $300-500m in royalties and taxes. So it’s not like consumers are going to get a huge reduction in their tax bill which will offset the extra they are paying to fill up their tank.

Source:  The Treasury, Budget 2011. Revenue data.

The only way to future proof our economy against rising volatile oil prices and an increasing carbon price is to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. That requires a serious plan of action, such as Denmark has developed. We need policy, regulatory and funding changes.

This Government clearly has no interest in setting ambitious targets, or even outlining how we might get to the unambitious targets they have set. For example, the EECS strategy has the target

By 2016: The efficiency of light vehicles entering the fleet has further improved from 2010 levels.

Doesn’t say how much better… just better. How’s that for a measurable and ambitious target? That way we don’t need to explain which Government policies will facilitate the outcome.

The Green Party knows we need a plan, and we are working on the outline of what we would do if we were in Government to create thousands of clean, green jobs, and transition our economy away from fossil fuels.

That’s the kind of energy strategy New Zealand needs.

Lloyds point out that 300 years of experience has given them a bit of an understanding of risk, and it is from that platform that they suggest that now is a really good time to get serious about finding ‘a new energy paradigm’.

The summary says that “The primary purpose of this report is to remind the reader that all businesses, not just the energy sector, need to consider how they, their suppliers and their customers will be affected by energy supplies which are less reliable and more expensive…reputations will be won or lost as the public demands that businesses reduce their environmental footprint.’

The report includes some of the bad news for those wishing things could just stay the same, with key points like :

• Businesses which prepare for and take advantage of the new energy reality will prosper – failure to do so could be catastrophic
• Market dynamics and environmental factors mean business can no longer rely on low cost traditional energy sources
• We are heading towards a global oil supply crunch and price spike
• Energy infrastructure will become increasingly vulnerable as a result of climate change and operations in harsher environments

The (potentially) good news is captured too :

• Investment in renewable energy and ‘intelligent’ infrastructure is booming. This revolution presents huge opportunities for new business partnerships

We have a history of creative design and innovation, and developing both hardware and software to support clean – tech approaches is an area where we could reap real economic success and make a positive contribution to managing climate change.  All we need now is a government that understands the opportunity and will create the policy settings to help make it happen!

Here are a few bits and bobs I’ve run across this weekend:

This disaster (and the failed solutions attempted) is practically a re-run of an incident in 1979, when oil leaked for several months. Except that one was in 200 feet of water, not 5,000.

Our technology for getting oil out has improved since then, but not the technology for cleaning up spills.

A diver goes underwater to see what’s not visible from the surface.

It seems that the unprecedented amount of dispersants being used are having the effect of hiding a lot of the spill just beneath the surface.

Live streaming video of one of the leaks

According to Wikipedia, on May 28th “the government increased its official estimate to 12,000–19,000 barrels (500,000–800,000 US gallons; 1,900,000–3,000,000 litres) a day.”.

Renowned Marine Biologist Carl Safina on the BP Oil Spill’s Ecological Impact on the Gulf Coast and Worldwide:

http://theoildrum.com/ has been an incredible source of deeply technical discussion about events as they have unfolded. Highly recommended.

The #oilspill twitter hashtag has been informative too.

Russel Norman has jumped in, guns blazing.

…

Although this has been going for over a month now, I’m still struggling to make sense of what it all means. There is a lesson here, a real big one and it applies to all of us. But I can’t quite articulate it. Help me out?

Most of us love having homes where we go to rest, eat, blog and shelter from rough weather. But imagine spending 8 months of the year confined inside – you’d have one hell of a case of cabin fever. That’s what is being applied for in the case of the Mackenzie Basin factory-farms.

Federated Farmers and the National Business Review are pretending not to know the difference between a herd home and a factory farm. They even think Russel Norman and I have different opinions on them.

A herd home on a Waikato dairy farm

They can’t succeed in driving a wedge between Russel and me on this because Russel and I visited Mike Moss’s herd home together, last year. This farm is featured on the Greens’ Good Farm Stories website.

Herd homes are open, light and airy and the cows are free to move around. They are not used 24/7. Even in filthy weather the cows are outside for at least the four hours it takes them to eat their daily ration of fresh grass. Then they are off the paddock, protecting the soil from pugging in wet weather and sheltering in the herd home where they have a ration of hay or silage to eat at will.

Russel and I were totally convinced when we saw the cows waiting to get back in after their time outside. When the weather is fine and the soil reasonably dry, they are outside all the time. Using a herd home as part of a pastoral farm results in much less nitrous oxide emissions from the wet soil. More manure and urine are able to be collected and treated for application to pasture when conditions are suitable. Animal welfare is improved. And herd homes can be used in a low-energy system because the cows still harvest their own feed with local dry feed as a supplement.

Mackenzie Country in snow CC 2.0

The factory-farms being applied for in the Mackenzie Basin are the opposite. The cows will be indoors 24 hours a day for 8 months, perhaps in cubicles most of the time. All feed will be brought to them, so it will require additional energy to produce and transport. Will it be palm kernel? Or maize or silage ‘cut and carried’ by trucks from hundreds of miles away? The Mackenzie Basin is a place where for much of the year no feed can be grown locally and the weather is inhospitable for cows.

Federated Farmers have twittered that it is the “principal” (I think they mean principle) that matters, not the scale. They’re wrong: it’s both.

Environmentally, scale can be everything. 180 cows might have a manageable impact on water quality, but 18,000 cows is a whole different ball-game. It is precisely the scale of dairying in New Zealand – the sheer numbers of cows, the intensity of stocking rates, and the resulting effluent and emissions – that is turning what used to be seen as a ‘clean green’ wholesome industry into a major polluter.

It’s also the principle. Outdoor cows that occasionally go indoors is fundamentally different to indoor cows that occasionally go outdoors. Animal welfare is an issue of principle, not scale – farm animals should live meaningful lives on farms, not in factories.

Intensive dairying in completely unsuitable places like the Mackenzie Country, and factory-farming practices generally, are recipes for disaster. The principle is all wrong, and the scale makes it worse still.

If you need any more convincing, then consider that Fonterra promotes use of herd homes on dairy farms, but has serious concerns about factory-farming destroying New Zealand’s competitive advantage of World SPCA-approved ‘clean and green’ pastoral dairying. And today the ODT reports Otago tourism and residents’ organisations calling the factory-farming proposals “insanity”.

The Wild Rivers campaign was stoked to hear it – they’ve only just launched and the Mokihinui is a prominent precedent-setting proposal to destroy a river ranked seven in the country for natural values.

Metiria rafting the Mokihinui

Here at the Greens we’ve certainly done heaps in and out of Parliament to tackle the threat to this premiere wild river. Our Co-leader Metiria Turei rafted it last year to check it out first hand. The Greens firmly oppose damming irreplaceable wild rivers like the Mokihinui – it’s unnecessary for energy supply, and it’s conservation sacrilege.

Peter Dunne welcomed Brownlee’s ‘burp’, perhaps inspired by the hunting lobby being members of the Wild River campaign. Labour slapped Brownlee down for his indiscretion. However, Charles Chauvel seemed to imply that Brownlee should be damming the river, without actually saying as much – or at least that’s how I interpret his three paragraph “secondly” point. Well Mr Chauvel, I recommend you read the Wild Rivers campaign information – it’s clear we don’t need to dam rivers to have a renewable energy future. Maybe I’ve misread him.

Mokihinui from the air

Anyway, I digress. So what does Brownlee know? While most media and comments have focused on the fact he shouldn’t interfere in the RMA consenting process – for which a decision is imminent, and will probably be appealed to the Environment Court either way – they’ve overlooked that there are two ticks required for this terrible project. Apart from the RMA, the dam requires a concession under the Conservation Act because it is on public conservation land.

And in this case, Meridian has offered a dodgy land-swap as I wrote here earlier this week.

Brownlee sits around the Cabinet table with Groser – indeed they’re holding hands in the rush to mine National Parks – and may well know something about the concession and landswap. I guess we’ll find out one day. Here’s hoping they’ve seen the dam proposal for what it is, a sacrifice of permanent, public natural capital for temporary, private physical capital – irreversible and not renewable at all.

If the dam does get approved contrary to Brownlee’s brain-burp, I’ll be the first to hop down to the river to stare down a bulldozer, if my minders will let me…

It’s great to see diverse groups – tree-huggers, deer-stalkers, bird-watchers, knobbly-kneed trampers, sharp-edged climbers, risky rafters, kool-kat kayakers, and angelic anglers – representing “over 100,000 New Zealanders” and united in seeking to protect wild rivers from inappropriate and unnecessary hydro-electric and irrigation water storage dams.

They’re not saying no hydro or storage anywhere, but that we have a finite number of wild rivers left, and must protect them from being picked off one-by-one.

The groups are Fish & Game, Federated Mountain Clubs, Forest & Bird, Whitewater NZ, the Council of Outdoor Recreation Associations of NZ, the NZ Rafting Association, the New Zealand Federation of Freshwater Anglers and the Environment and Conservation Organisations of NZ.

The various groups point out the public values for conservation and recreation that are inherent to wild rivers, and are lost if they are dammed. For Whitewater NZ it’s enjoyment of the water, and the tourism industry; for Fish and Game it’s the fishing, of course, and the importance of Water Conservation Orders (that the Govt seems keen to get rid of); for FMC it’s the ability to walk and camp in a natural setting, of which wild rivers form the “lifeblood”; and Forest and Bird cite the unique wild river wildlife – native eels and fish, and endangered blue ducks.

The groups have fought hard for decades to get protection of wild lakes and rivers such as Lake Manapouri and the mighty Motu River. Water conservation orders have been a crucial tool in protecting such waterways, but the future of the orders, and the fate of dozens of other threatened wild rivers, is in peril.

They also note that we’ve already sacrificed many wild rivers, so there are a finite number left. They say, “Damming them is irresponsible and short-sighted, especially when there are much more responsible and sustainable options.” They’ve done their homework on the energy and irrigation needs too, which a summary of the alternative solution, and the choice, on their website. They also think that:

Energy planning must become more strategic, focusing on efficiency rather than building more dams. The Electricity Commission has said that NZ could make savings of 6400 gigawatt hours a year – equivalent to 20 Mokihinui dams – at less cost than building new electricity generators. New Zealand also has plentiful wind and geothermal resources that can be better developed to generate electricity. Innovative emerging technologies also show promise.

Industrial-scale farming is demanding more water from rivers to irrigate land that is naturally too dry for dairy cows. Farming use should be appropriate to the climate and land.

I’ve signed up as a supporter on their ‘oarsome’ website. Please join me!

A National Government created Schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act in 1997 to protect National Parks from mining.

The Government wants to mine in Kahurangi National Park, a Park created by National while Nick Smith was Conservation Minister and proudly opened in 1996 by Jim Bolger.

So, why does Nick Smith support this move?

Here is Nick’s 1997 speech [not online] when the Schedule was created:

Thursday, November 20, 1997

Hon. NICK SMITH (Minister of Conservation): In rising to support the third reading of the Bill, I draw the House’s attention to the significance of the final stages of the passage of this legislation. …

This Bill at long last puts some pegs in the sand in some very significant areas of New Zealand and says to the mining industries of New Zealand: “These are no-go areas.”

I draw the House’s attention this afternoon to just how significant that range of areas is. First, we have all those areas that are national parks: areas such as the Abel Tasman National Park, and the national parks of Arthur’s Pass, Egmont, Fiordland, Kahurangi, Mount Aspiring, Mount Cook, Nelson Lakes, Paparoa, Tongariro, Te Urewera, Westland, and Whanganui. Those areas total over 3 million hectares of land. This legislation says to the mining industries that those areas set aside as national parks are not appropriate areas for mining.

If one picks up the National Parks Act and sees the quite prohibitive range of activities that is permitted to go on in those areas, one realises that it is certainly consistent with those activities to say that mining should not occur in those areas. In effect, this legislation we are about to pass sets and strengthens that National Parks Act, which dates back to 1980.

This legislation goes further than just national parks. Areas around New Zealand have been set aside as nature reserves, scientific reserves, wilderness areas, sanctuaries, and wildlife sanctuaries. There are areas that have been set aside as Ramsar sites, in terms of the convention on wetlands and highly migratory birds, as well as those areas in the Coromandel that the Alliance member Jeanette Fitzsimons has mentioned. This Bill sets out quite clearly very significant areas of conservation estate in which mining is not allowed. That is something that this House should welcome.

In 1990 National’s manifesto committed it to going down this route. …. the commitment that was made in 1990 to ban mining in national parks was a significant one. … the Bill does provide a mechanism, which has been improved in the Committee stage, whereby additional areas can be added to those that will be provided for in the mining ban.

I also wish to make comment about my New Zealand First colleagues and their attitude to this Bill. Members will note that the coalition agreement specifically mentions the banning of mining in national parks. Again, I would draw to the attention of this House that the Government is honouring a further clause of the coalition agreement by advancing this legislation.

Environmental groups—the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society, the Maruia Society, and groups in the Coromandel—have pushed for this legislation for a very long time. I welcome its progress. I want to make reference to the cooperative way in which members on both sides of the House have worked to progress this legislation. ….

This is landmark legislation for the conservation movement in New Zealand. I welcome the Bill’s progress and, as Minister of Conservation, look forward to not having to consider mining applications in those areas where nature should be able to rule the roost.

What’s changed, Nick?

Tongariro National Park Photo by flickr.com/photos/jcolman/

On 23 September 1887, Te Heuheu Tukino of Tuwharetoa gifted the mountains of Tongariro, Ngaruhoe and Ruapehu to the people of Aotearoa. As Frog’s kiwidiary notes, this allowed all New Zealanders access and usage for recreation, but also gave us all responsibility to care for and protect these sacred mountains. Parliament passed the Tongariro National Park Act in 1894.

This anniversary was sullied by the fact that the Crown is now considering the Park’s mining potential. The Minister of Energy and Resources and the Minister of Conservation are undertaking a stocktake of high value conservation places listed in Schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act, which includes all National Parks.

Despite the Acting Minister of Tourism’s attempts to play it down with the comment that “the Minister of Energy and Resources has not said anything about opening up national parks to mining”, that Minister Brownlee has refused to rule National Parks like Tongariro out of the stocktake, saying to Metiria: “The member knows which bits of the national parks are in schedule 4 — all of them, in fact. But we have said that we are doing a stocktake of the lands in schedule 4 — end of story.”

What a way to celebrate such a generous gift to the Crown and people of these lands – to include them in the Government’s treasure-hunt folly. I wonder what Te Heuheu Tukino’s mokopuna, National Minister Hon Georgina Te Heuheu, thinks of the idea?

You can have your say by reading about the Government intentions on our mining page , sending an ecard to the PM, and getting your friends to sign the petition [PDF].

Meridian Energy has applied to the Councils and DOC for consents and concessions to dam the gorge. It’s on protected conservation land, and has historic artifacts such as the old pack track and bridge toppled in the 1929 Murchison earthquake.

The river biodiversity [PDF 2MB] is one of the most healthy and prolific in the country. It has been ranked the 7th most important river for natural values.

The Greens argue that these far outweigh the benefits of 310-360GW hours per year that the dam would produce, especially when the Arnold run-of-river 430GWh scheme is likely to go ahead and solve the West Coast’s security and efficiency of supply issues.

The other value of the Mokihinui is as a jewel in the 100% pure tourism crown of New Zealand. It’s easy for the Greens to say this, but it’s not just us who do – it’s the tourists who come there and support the local economy.

Today the Government trumpeted the one millionth Australian visitor to New Zealand this year. At the same time, one of those visitors wrote about their experience in the Lifestyle section of the Byron Shire News. The account of “Wild west adventure” tourism on the West Coast of the South Island says:

MAORI legend tells us the first person to set foot in New Zealand was Maui, who came ashore on the South Island’s wild and rugged West Coast at a place now called Bruce Bay. …

[Bruce Bay] is just one of the unexpected discoveries that make exploring this coastline such a delight. …

While the coast offers a never ending variety of natural vistas, there are also many man made attractions to keep you busy… But the main attractions along the West Coast are undoubtedly those nature has provided. …

North of Westport, on the banks of the untamed Mokihinui River, I find one of my favourite experiences.

Enough said.

The Government Procurement Reform Agenda is based around four key themes:
·         Cost savings.
·         Building procurement capability and capacity.
·         Enhanced business participation.
·         Improved governance, oversight and accountability.

Cost savings:  just to the Government’s expenditure or also saving costs to our natural capital? After all, sustainable procurement means buying stuff that will last longer, save on energy and resource-use, reduce our emissions, and reduce pollution. These all save New Zealand money, even if this capital and cost-savings are not measured in Treasury’s budget.

The current Government Procurement Framework includes:

requiring sustainably produced goods and services wherever possible, having regard to economic, environmental and social impacts over their life cycle.

Given sustainability is not mentioned in the Reform Agenda, will this requirement be retained, or will it be another polar bear blood-bath?

We have a tremendous offshore wind resource, but in relatively deep water where fixed platforms are impossible or not cost effective.

While the London Array involves fixed platforms, it is the industry capacity and expertise to build large scale farms at sea that we need. Then we couple it with the emerging floating platform technology, and New Zealand is golden.

Hydro and geothermal are the perfect partners for load matching with large scale wind, with a bit of gas for winter and summer peaking plant.

At the Strategy launch, the PM and Ag Minister David Carter mooed in the direction of the environment: the PM said, “It is important that farmers step up and take leadership on meeting some of the environmental challenges that will shape the future of your industry”, and his Minster repeated that, “no farmer has a right to pollute”. But NZPA noted that, “Despite the two politicians’ comments, there was limited mention of cleaning up “dirty dairying” in the five key goals set out for the next decade”. Fish and Game said similar scoring the Strategy 2 out of 6.

The Strategy is indeed pretty weak on environmental commitments. However, what is refreshing is the admission, finally, that environmental degradation is a big issue for the industry, and that the responsibility for fixing it lies with the industry itself. This is a step forward, even if their main rationale is the threat to their brand image. I didn’t see much recognition that water is a public asset, swimming and drinking a public right, and that commercial activity that takes that away is a public subsidy to the industry.

It is pleasing also that the whole industry is now acknowledging their environmental impact. The Greens think that the voluntary Clean Streams Accord, by only including Fonterra, effectively lets the other companies off the hook. It also means that Fonterra is afraid to be too progressive with sustainability measures (carrots or sticks), hence the weakness of the Accord targets, lest their suppliers simply move to a rival company without such measures. Questioned on this, the Minister remained obstinate.

New Zealand needs effective regulation that mandates best practice across the whole dairy industry, reduces effluent discharge non-compliance to near-zero, and rolls-out riparian planting, fish-passage culverts and fencing to protect waterways. There’s a lot of jobs in that type of work, and other opportunities to improve agriculture’s sustainability like shifting to low input systems, tree-planting to stablise soil in the hill-country, and energy-saving technology like biodigesters and solar water-heating for the dairy shed to reduce energy demand and reduce emissions.

The Minister has again said, like Ministers before him, that if the industry does not lift its environmental performance, the government will step in with regulation.  Just how many years of woeful performance under voluntary measures do we have to wait? What is not clear from the new Strategy is how the industry actually intends to lift its environmental performance. This allow the Minister to sit on his hands forever, making his threats also all talk and no action.

The Herald and The Press were both talking about wind-farms, but the arguments hold for hydro too. And last week, Contact confirmed its intention to pursue four ressurrected hydro proposals on the Clutha (the river that the Clyde and Roxburgh dams are on). It seems hydro is suddenly economic again – the bluerush is on.

Jeanette Fitzsimons says [RadioNZ podcast] that we don’t need to “go without” as such to avoid sacrificing our rivers, but be smarter in our use. We can use what we have more efficiently, conserve unnecessary energy wastage, reduce the demand by doing commonsense improvements like insulation, industry can make more use of co-generation (e.g. coal mine gas, dairy effluent and woody biomass), and we can also build some new generation from geothermal, wind, some hydro and in the future, wave, tidal, solar….

So the question we should ask is not “do we need power and will a Clutha dam provide it”, but how much new supply do we need, what are the other options, what are the relative environmental impacts of dams and other generation sources (e.g. can we restore the environment if we end up not needing them), are rivers renewable given there are a finite number, and how much value does the public place on our remaining rivers.

It should be remembered that we have already committed a great number of NZ’s rivers to hydro (50-70% of generation comes from hydro), and many more to other landscape modification and water degradation (agriculture, sewage, etc) and at some point we may wish to protect what remains.

Here’s a lovely campaign video of the Clutha to engage the heart as well as the head if you are so inclined.

Bill Gross, the founder of Idealab, talks about his life as an inventor, starting with his high-school company selling solar energy plans and kits. Learn here about a groundbreaking system for solar cells — and some questions we haven’t yet solved.

I shall try and find out where he is at with this, as this recording is a few years old now. Brilliant stuff. If we can get that payback down to 5 years, as Bill wants to do, we are golden. Shaving the top off of our profligate hunger for cheap energy, then sharing it across the grid is a great way to go. It will require a paradigm shift away from our centralised, bigger-is-better approach to energy generation. Bring it on, I say!

G is grump grump.

G is for Godawful.

G is for Genesis

In the beginning there was stupidity and then – Good Lord – there was more stupidity.

The latest chapter in this sorry saga called the Book of Genesis is the resource consent for the Rodney gas plant granted by Rodney District Council last week. 

This means we are now a step closer to a gas-powered plant for which we don’t have gas.

If we have to import gas we are at the mercy of overseas supply and pricing and the exchange rate.  For a moment, let’s do what the traditional economists do and consider the environmental costs an ‘externality’ and, even in this narrow world view, Rodney makes NO sense. Zero. Zip. Nada.  Even Genesis admits this, but on we go…

Genesis wrote to the Electricity Commission on 4 December 2008 that it does not have “access to a sufficient, secure forward quantity of gas” for the proposed power station, and it has admitted the power station is not viable in a “in a real-world, commercial sense”.

The story gets better: we’ve spent more than $70 million planning for the Rodney plant. We could have fixed a bunch of transmission problems for this sort of money, but hey, let’s keep chasing ‘Think Big,’ 1980s-style projects.

Speaking of dated, a friendly frog has pointed out that some of Genesis’ latest advertising features the slogan “Hello Tomorrow” above the photo of a hydro dam…built in 1973.  (On the count of three, everybody slap their foreheads and say ‘doh!’).  Here’s more copy from Genesis

Hydro power. Take some water, add gravity, plus a little technology and you can generate enough power for an entire city, without producing even the tiniest amount of CO2 emissions. To find out what else we’re doing about climate change (and what you can do), visit genesisenergy.co.nz. Together, we can make a big difference to tomorrow.

So we talk about climate change while throwing millions at a gas-powered plant.

Similarly here’s a Genesis press release headline(sic) from last week

Genesis Energy has completed the first step of a process which could lead to the development of a wind farm in northern Wairarapa.

So we talk about wind, while spending mega-bucks on gas.

Remember too that the National-led Government gave a big thumbs up to baseload thermal generation as soon as it took office.

‘Think Big’ came to be ridiculed as ‘Think Pig’ and happy talk about hydro and wind is the metaphorical lipstick on the Rodney pig.  Grrrr.