Speaking today at Solid Energy’s Annual Meeting in Auckland, Chief Executive Officer, Dr Don Elder says that in a first for New Zealand, coal seam gas is now producing enough electricity for 500 to 800 homes, using one of the world’s cleanest forms of thermal energy.

The on-site generator is currently fed by four wells taking gas from a 32 hectare section of the coalfield. Gas flow from this small pilot has the potential to power as many as 1000 homes but it is not yet known if the local network connection can accept that much electricity.

Coal seam gas can be used for industrial energy, electricity generation and could be injected into gas transmission systems to supplement gas resources.

While it ceratainly is unique to be using coal seam gas in New Zealand, burning it to produce electricity, where up to two thirds of the energy can be lost in the form of waste heat, is a poor use of a non-renewable resource. This is particularly true here, where it is common knowledge that renewables, including baseload geothermal, are cheaper than thermal baseload.

That last use mentioned in the quote is the future for natural gas in New Zealand – direct use in homes and in industry, where the heat is what is wanted, and where using electricity to create heat is in fact wasteful. The long transformative journey from gas > heat > electricity >  heat for many uses is a waste of a finite resource.

Coal seam gas does have a future in New Zealand, particularly given the rapid dwindling of our big gas fields. We can expect serious shortfalls in gas supply here in NZ by 2015 if current trends – and waste – continue. Let’s be smart about how we use it – this time.

In the past few days, the researchers have seen areas of sea foaming with gas bubbling up through “methane chimneys” rising from the sea floor. They believe that the sub-sea layer of permafrost, which has acted like a “lid” to prevent the gas from escaping, has melted away to allow methane to rise from underground deposits formed before the last ice age.

They have warned that this is likely to be linked with the rapid warming that the region has experienced in recent years.

Methane is about 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and many scientists fear that its release could accelerate global warming in a giant positive feedback where more atmospheric methane causes higher temperatures, leading to further permafrost melting and the release of yet more methane.

And what does Jeanette have to say?

We won’t fix this one by changing light bulbs. It’s really, really scary.

That pretty much sums it up. The scientists have reported that at some locations, the methane release is 100 times normal background levels, so this is a meltdown significantly greater than business as usual.

The Arctic region as a whole has seen a 4C rise in average temperatures over recent decades and a dramatic decline in the area of the Arctic Ocean covered by summer sea ice. Many scientists fear that the loss of sea ice could accelerate the warming trend because open ocean soaks up more heat from the sun than the reflective surface of an ice-covered sea.

It is truly disturbing that such an important indicator of anthropogenic global warming gets such short shrift in the main stream media. We should be responding as if our lives depended on it. Because they do. tick. tick. tick. tick…

Now, if we could just convince the few remaining politicians and businesspeople around here to to pull their heads from the sand and acknowledge the science, we might be able to get on with the serious work of remaking our corner of the world into a sustainable and just community.