The Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) has warned that a planned AI data centre in Southland would consume up to 25 percent of New Zealand’s annual electricity output and push power prices higher for Kiwi consumers and businesses.

CAFCA organiser Murray Horton said in a statement that data centres consumed a “phenomenal amount” of electricity.

“The proposed $5 billion foreign-owned Datagrid AI centre near Invercargill would require 1 gigawatt of electricity to operate,” he said.

• READ MORE: Southland’s first ‘AI factory’ data centre gets go-ahead
• Other AI energy reports

“That is nearly twice as much as the 570 megawatts that Rio Tinto’s Tiwai Point aluminium smelter consumes.

“Currently the smelter takes 13 percent of all the electricity New Zealand produces. If the data centre is built, we would have to sacrifice more than one third of the power we produce to supply just two foreign-owned businesses.”

Horton said CAFCA had long targeted Rio Tinto’s smelter near Bluff, labelling it New Zealand’s “biggest corporate bludger”.

“It pays a secret, super cheap price for power that is not available for any other user. All other electricity users in Aotearoa therefore subsidise the power that the smelter consumes and exports in the form of aluminium,” he said.

Textbook example
“Rio Tinto’s smelter is the textbook example of corporate welfare in New Zealand, but this new data centre would take this to another level. It would use twice as much power and would require it 24 hours a day, every single day of the year.

“In a dry winter the smelter can turn off one or two of its pot lines to conserve power, but data centres cannot do that. Industry experts say AI computers can be damaged if they are shut down so they need an unending, uninterrupted supply.

“The government’s plans to develop a liquefied natural gas import terminal in Taranaki to provide backup power in lean years have to be seen in this light.

“LNG is environmentally harmful and, as we have seen with the war in Iran, potentially vulnerable solution to a problem largely created by these large power users.

“Without these major consumers, we could use new renewable energy generation and better storage and management of our supply to meet demand in dry years,” Horton said.

Another problem with AI computing centres is that they generated high levels of heat, so they must be cooled using large amounts of water. This is why cool regions such as Southland are sought after by developers.

Heat from data centres can be siphoned off and used to heat urban areas, but this requires significant investment in infrastructure.

‘Insidious nature’
Horton said concerns about electricity and water consumption as well as the “insidious nature of AI” were driving opposition to AI data centres around the world.

“Because it has made a big bet on AI, the United States is at the forefront of this. Many states have used tax incentives to encourage data centres and some AI companies are even developing their own generators to power them.”

Microsoft planned to reopen the notorious Three Mile Island nuclear power plant to run data centres in four different states, for example.

“Now opposition to them is growing right across the US. The issue unites people across the political spectrum — from MAGA to the far left. And The New York Times reports there are movements against them in Europe, South Africa, Latin America, India and Southeast Asia,” Horton said.

“There are also concerns about the nature of AI itself. Many people are worried that AI will cause massive unemployment. The military’s use of AI and facial recognition tools create some truly frightening prospects.

“AI is an unprecedented and potentially devastating technology but there has been very little discussion of it in New Zealand.

“The Overseas Investment Office has approved the construction of the data centre in Southland, but that is not a surprise because they approve nearly all projects that foreign companies want to operate here propose.”

Ethical issues
Along with the ethical issues AI poses, the economics of data centres did not add up, Horton said.

While they created jobs during the construction phase, once they were up and running they were virtually automatic and profits flowed to the biggest tech oligarchs in the world.

CAFCA is calling for a halt to major AI data centres in Aotearoa.

“They are being sold to the NZ public as The Next Big Thing, with little or no discussion about their massive impact on our electricity and water resources, let alone any discussion on the bigger issue of highly controversial AI,” Horton said.

RNZ Pacific

Pacific climate activists this week handed a letter from civil society to this year’s United Nations climate conference hosts, Brazil, emphasising their demands for the end of fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy.

More than 180 indigenous, youth, and environmental organisations from across the world have signed the letter, coordinated by the campaign organisation, 350.org.

A declaration of alliance between Indigenous peoples from the Amazon, the Pacific, and Australia ahead of COP30 has also been announced.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific Climate Warrior reports

The “strongly worded letter” was handed to COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago and Brazil’s Environment and Climate Change Minister Marina Silva who attended the Acampamento Terra Livre (ATL), or Free Land Camp, in Brasília.

“We, climate and social justice organisations from around the world, urgently demand that COP30 renews the global commitment and supports implementation for the just, orderly, and equitable transition away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy,” the letter states.

“This must ensure that solutions progressively meet the needs of Indigenous, Black, marginalised and vulnerable populations and accelerate the expansion of renewables in a way that ensures the world’s wealthiest and most polluting nations pay their fair share, does not harm nature, increase deforestation by burning biomass, while upholding economic, social, and gender justice.”

‘No room for new coal mines’
It adds: “The science is unequivocal: there is no room for new coal mines or oil and gas fields if the world is to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius — especially in critical ecosystems like the Amazon, where COP30 will be hosted.

“Tripling renewables by 2030 is essential, but without a managed and rapid phaseout of fossil fuels, it won’t be enough.”

350.org’s Fiji community organiser, George Nacewa, said it was now up to the Brazil COP Presidency if they would act “or lock us into climate catastrophe”.

“This is a critical time for our people — the age of deliberation is long past,” Nacewa said on behalf of the group that call themselves “Pacific Climate Warriors”.

“We need this COP to be the one that spearheads the Just Energy Transition from words to action.”

COP30 will take place in Belém, Brazil, from November 10-21.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

As the world grapples with multiple ecological crises, it’s clear the various responses over the past half century have largely failed. Our new research argues the priority now should be addressing the real driver of these crises — our own maladaptive behaviours.

For at least five decades, scientists have worked to understand and document how human demands exceed Earth’s regenerative capacity, causing “ecological overshoot”.

Those warnings of the threats posed by the overshoot’s many symptoms, including climate change, were perhaps naive. They assumed people and governments would respond logically to existential threats by drastically changing behaviours.

• READ MORE: Critics of ‘degrowth’ economics say it’s unworkable – but from an ecologist’s perspective, it’s inevitable

The young researchers in the 1970s who published the Limits to Growth computer models showed graphically what would happen over the next century if business-as-usual economic growth continued.

Their models predicted the ecological and social disasters we are witnessing now.

Once people saw the results of the research, the authors believed, they would understand the trajectory the world was on and reduce consumption accordingly. Instead, they saw their work dismissed and business-as-usual play out.

The behavioural crisis
During these past five decades, there have been innumerable reports, speeches and data, ever more strident in their predictions. Yet there has been no change in the economic growth trajectory.

The first world scientists’ warning to humanity was published in 1992 as an open letter, signed by hundreds of scientists and detailing how human activities damage the environment.

A second notice in 2017, which thousands of scientists signed, included this stark statement:

If the world doesn’t act soon, there will be catastrophic biodiversity loss and untold amounts of human misery.

Many of those working in the natural sciences felt they were doing what they could to prevent this “ghastly future” unfolding. Researchers even laid out a framework of actions for the world to take, including human population planning and diminishing per capita consumption of fossil fuels, meat and other resources.

But few meaningful changes have been achieved.

By taking a different perspective, our research explores intervention points and demonstrates the behavioural roots of ecological overshoot. It is a collaboration with behaviour-change strategists in the marketing industry, and grew partly from their disaffection with the outcomes of their work on human and planetary health.

Behind the research sits a stark statistic: the wealthiest 16 percent of humanity is responsible for 74 percent of excess energy and material use. This reflects a crisis of human behaviour. It is the outcome of many individual choices involving resource acquisition, wastefulness and accumulation of wealth and status.

Some of these choices may have served humans well in the evolutionary past. In a modern global economy, however, they become maladaptive behaviours that threaten all complex life on Earth.

The ‘growth delusion’
Current interventions to restrain climate change — just one symptom of ecological overshoot — are failing to curb emissions. Last year, global emissions of carbon dioxide reached a new high, partly as a result of air travel rebounding after the covid pandemic.

We argue that trying to fix an accelerating problem with slow solutions is itself the problem. Instead, we need to treat the root causes of ecological overshoot and its behavioural drivers, rather than be distracted by patching up its many symptoms.

#PBBMgoodNEWS#PBBMFDI

Japanese solar power system operator Advantec signed a memorandum of understanding with the Philippines on Thursday to supply renewable energy to factories, aiming to eventually set up emergency backup power systems in the country.https://t.co/SVMeveVCXS

— Bong Onli (@GrowlHarhar) October 17, 2023

A prime example is the current “solution” to climate change through a full transition to renewable energy systems. This simply replaces one form of energy with another, but doesn’t address the rising demand for energy that enabled overshoot in the first place.

Such interventions are incremental, resource intensive, slow moving and flawed: they aim to maintain rather than manage current levels of consumption. This “growth delusion” offers a false hope that technology will allow human society to avoid the need for change.

An emergency response
To overcome the critical disconnect between science, the economy and public understanding of these issues, an interdisciplinary response will be needed.

Paradoxically, the marketing, media and entertainment industries — central to the manipulation of human behaviours towards resource acquisition and waste — may offer the best way to reorient that behaviour and help avoid ecological collapse.

Logically, the same behavioural strategies that fuelled consumerism can do the reverse and create the necessary desire for a stable state.

Understanding the many dimensions of the behavioural crisis, including the influence of power structures and vested interests in a market economy, is crucial. Defusing and even co-opting those forces to reform the economy and reverse the damage is the challenge.

It will require a concerted multi-disciplinary effort to identify the best ways to produce a rapid global adoption of new norms for consumption, reproduction and waste. The survival of complex life on Earth is the goal.

This research was led by Joseph Merz of the New Zealand-based Merz Institute and its Overshoot Behaviour Lab. Other authors include energy researcher Chris Rhodes; economist and ecologist Bill Rees; and behavioural science practitioner and vice chair of advertising company Ogilvy, Rory Sutherland.

Mike Joy, senior researcher; Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington and Phoebe Barnard, affiliate full professor, University of Washington; research associate, African Climate & Development Initiative and FitzPatrick Institute, University of Cape Town; founding CEO, Stable Planet Alliance, University of Washington. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

The announcement of a partnership between the New Zealand government and the world’s biggest investment manager BlackRock in a NZ$2 billion climate infrastructure fund suggests the company is expecting renewable energy in New Zealand to increase its own profitability.

The new fund is the first country-specific renewable investment BlackRock has made, following its 2022 acquisition of New Zealand company SolarZero, which produces solar battery storage and other energy services.

The initiative also underpins the government’s aspirational goal of having 100 percent of electricity generated by renewable sources by 2035.

The purpose of this fund is to accelerate investment from Crown companies and agencies to speed up decarbonisation. But will it cut costs to consumers?

Given New Zealand’s isolation and reliance on exports and tourism, the country remains vulnerable to climate change impacts and carbon pricing designed to help cut emissions.

Aside from storm and drought damage from climate change that disrupts food production, both imports and exports are likely to increase in price, and carbon-based tariffs may adversely affect New Zealand’s economy.

To address climate change threats in New Zealand will require more than mobilising private investment with a focus on renewable energy. It will need a comprehensive and collaborative approach that acknowledges dependencies on shipping and air travel, which continue to depend on fossil fuels.

Here are ten broad areas that must be considered when tackling the specific and sometimes unique challenges New Zealand faces in the years ahead:

1. Maximising renewable energy
Most of New Zealand’s electricity comes from hydro power as well as wind and solar power. It is already over 80 percent renewable, but the grid is topped up by coal.

Promoting renewable electricity is essential but likely not enough. Energy for industrial processes (heating, drying, steel production) still relies on fossil fuels, and we need to make more use of abundant solar and wind resources.

Because these resources are intermittent, they must be integrated with hydro power to serve as a “battery” by storing water behind a dam. This requires a national, publicly owned entity whose goal is to maximise renewable energy production (not profits in private companies).

2. Rethinking travel
New Zealand has a growing fleet of electric vehicles, but the transport system still largely runs on fossil fuels. It is one of the country’s largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for 17 percent of gross emissions.

Apart from improving public transport and promoting cycling and walking, simply avoiding unnecessary travel becomes essential. The covid pandemic has shown the way with teleconferencing and virtual meetings.

3. Reduce shipping emissions
If shipping were a country, it would be sixth in total emissions. Last month, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), a UN agency that regulates global shipping, agreed to a new climate strategy to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions “close to 2050”.

Already, penalties are being implemented to prevent use of high-sulphur oil. A carbon tax or levy is likely, starting in the European Union in 2024. Biofuels, methanol and perhaps even wind power may help shipping.

4. Trains versus planes
For international air travel, development of sustainable aviation fuels is progressing. Further optimising air traffic and flight routes and promoting the use of fuel-efficient aircraft and technologies is essential.

It seems likely carbon offsets may be required, and these could be expensive. For domestic travel, trains may become more viable.

Climate policy expert ‘cautiously optimistic’ over BlackRock deal https://t.co/6GwrYVrIP1

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) August 9, 2023

5. Prepare for tourism declines
Ecotourism is likely to grow, and operators will have to abide by sustainability certifications and limits to fragile ecosystems areas. Off-peak and new, dispersed destinations seem likely.

Offsetting carbon may become mandatory and the cost is likely to go up, with adverse effects on New Zealand’s economy.

6. Better carbon offsets
The need for quality offsets for fossil fuel use is likely to increase. The main potential is wood in trees, since plants take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

However, trees have a finite lifetime and this can only be a temporary fix. Indigenous trees grow more slowly and can lock up carbon for more than a century. But considerable care is needed to avoid forest fires and disease, or the offset value diminishes rapidly.

7. Strategic forestry
Protecting and restoring existing native forests helps conserve biodiversity. It also helps limit runoff and erosion. Large-scale afforestation and reforestation efforts to expand forest cover should continue, as strategic planting of native trees will enhance carbon sequestration and restore ecosystem balance.

Implementation of sustainable forest management practices, emphasising selective logging and reforestation after harvesting, will ensure a continuous carbon sink, preserve biodiversity and protect sensitive ecosystems.

8. Greener cities and towns
Urban forestry can counteract urban heat island effects and enhance air quality. Planting trees in public spaces and along streets in residential areas can reduce energy consumption for cooling and improve people’s wellbeing.

9. Biofuel development
As well as using wood to temporarily sequester carbon, it can be used as a biofuel. Torrefaction is a thermal process that involves heating biomass in the absence of oxygen to produce a more energy-dense and stable material.

This process can be applied to various types of biomass, including wood chips, slash, agricultural residues and other organic materials. The resulting torrefied biomass has several advantages, including improved grindability, increased energy density and reduced moisture content.

It is currently used at the Huntly power station in place of coal but the torrefied wood chips are imported. Instead, this could be an important fuel and an export, given the shortages in Europe arising from the Ukraine war.

10. Incentives for better land use
Regenerative farming, agroforestry and silvopasture techniques integrate trees with agricultural practices. This enhances carbon sequestration, improves soil health and provides additional income streams for farmers.

New Zealand should implement financial incentives and regulations to encourage private landowners to participate in tree planting and sustainable forest management. Tax incentives, carbon offset programmes and grants can drive private investment in climate-friendly practices.

A more self-sufficient future
Addressing climate change threats in New Zealand requires acknowledgement of the dependencies on shipping, air travel and tourism. Planning for the consequences of climate change and building resilience are both essential.

New Zealand needs to become a lot more self-sufficient and reduce volumes of exports by increasing domestic processing and manufacture. These changes may be hastened by international tariffs on trade based on carbon content.

By transitioning to green shipping, transforming air travel and fostering sustainable tourism, New Zealand can mitigate its carbon footprint, protect natural ecosystems and ensure long-term socioeconomic prosperity. Public-private partnerships and robust policy implementation are crucial.

Kevin Trenberth, distinguished scholar, NCAR; affiliate faculty, University of Auckland. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

There is “is much to win by trying” to take action on climate change — that is a key finding in a major new international climate report the UN chief is calling a “survival guide for humanity”.

It is something of a mic drop moment for the army of scientists who wrote it — the culmination of seven years’ work and three previous lengthy reports.

Thousands of scientific studies and nearly 8000 pages of findings have been boiled down in the latest UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, released overnight.

• READ MORE:  UN calls for rapid, ambitious action to tackle climate crisis
• IPCC report: world must cut emissions and urgently adapt to climate realities
• The AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023

In a nutshell, it said huge changes were needed to stave off the worst climate predictions but it was not too late.

“This Synthesis Report underscores the urgency of taking more ambitious action & shows that, if we act now, we can still secure a liveable sustainable future for all.” – #IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee on the release of #IPCC’s Synthesis Report.

Read here https://t.co/zAMzd12lR7 pic.twitter.com/YcCqIHxuLJ

— IPCC (@IPCC_CH) March 20, 2023

Pacific Climate Warriors Te Whanganui-a-Tara coordinator Kalo Afeaki agrees there is no time for despair.

“My family live in Tonga, my father has an export business, my brother works with [him], his family depends on that livelihood,” he said.

“We do not have the luxury of being able to turn our backs on the climate crisis because we are living with it daily.”

The IPCC authors were optimistic significant change can happen fast — pointing to the massive falls in the price of energy from the sun and wind.

New Zealand has seen a big increase in the number of renewable energy projects in the works.

University of Otago senior lecturer Dr Daniel Kingston said the world had the tools it needed to reduce emission.

“We can still do something about this problem, and every small change that we make makes a difference and decreases the likelihood of major, abrupt, irreversible changes in the climate system.”

Those impacts need to be avoided at all costs — there are tipping points after which comes staggering sea level rise, storms and heat waves that could imperil swathes of humanity.

No country too small
Aotearoa New Zealand has an important role to play. It is one of the largest emitters per capita in the OECD, and its emissions, combined with the other smaller countries, adds up to about two-thirds of the world’s total.

New Zealand’s gross emission peaked in 2005 and have essentially plateaued, while other countries, including the UK and US, have actually made reductions.

Dr Kingston said Aotearoa finally had comprehensive emissions reduction plans on the books.

“Now’s the time to be doubling-down on our climate change policies, not pressing pause or scaling them back in any way.”

Action would never be cheaper than it was now, and not making enough cuts would be far more expensive in the long run.

Humans at fault
Meanwhile, the reports showed human activities had unequivocally caused global surface temperatures to rise: No ifs, no buts.

Massey University emeritus professor of sustainable energy and climate mitigation Ralph Sims said emissions needed to be slashed in the cities and the countryside alike.

Without a doubt farmers needed to cut methane emissions, but people also needed to eat less meat, he said.

Professor Sims said cities had a huge role to play.

“Design the cities around… public transport. [Putting] it onto the cities to plan for a more viable future means that local people can get involved locally.”

Afeaki said some Pacific nations would not survive unless the world got real about cutting emissions.

“When people are feeling disheartened they really need to understand the humans on the other side of this crisis,” he said.

“It is easy to be deterred by numbers, by the science, which isn’t always positive, but you have to also remember that this is happening to someone.”

Afeaki said Pacific communities’ experience living with climate change meant they should be given lead roles in coming up with solutions.

The IPCC scientists have now done their part, there likely will not be another report like this until the end of the decade. It is now time for the government, and for everybody, to act.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Globally, the electricity sector is shifting from large, centralised grids powered by fossil fuels to smaller and smarter renewable local networks.

One area of strong interest is “energy arbitrage”, which allows users to buy and store electricity when it is cheaper and sell or use it when the cost is high.

But Aotearoa New Zealand is slow to take this up — even though it is a crucial part of the transition to a zero-carbon future. Why is this?

• READ MORE: Good news – there’s a clean energy gold rush under way. We’ll need it to tackle energy price turbulence and coal’s exodus
• ‘We want to be part of that movement’: residents embrace renewable energy but worry how their towns will change
• Other renewable energy reports

Small-grid technologies and infrastructure are still in the experimental phase, being tested for effectiveness and desirability of different set-ups, ownership models and commercial arrangements.

And intelligent energy-management systems that can provide a prescient forecast of market dynamics are not used widely.

To better understand these dynamics, we have modelled a theoretical “microgrid” in a residential subdivision, Totarabank, in the North Island of Aotearoa.

We used the model to forecast the expected commercial returns from investing in microgrids and to unlock potential revenue streams from energy arbitrage.

Smart scheduling of batteries
Energy arbitrage requires battery storage and intelligent control to make the most of a local renewable energy system’s generation.

This can be achieved by forecasting short-term future electricity consumption and linking this to the spot power price on the market. Sophisticated real-time controllers then decide if the local system should store or sell to the market (or store and sell later).

Battery storage systems can vary in size, from community-scale batteries supplying a neighbourhood to batteries within a fleet of electric vehicles (EVs). The fundamental controlling processes required to achieve an optimal outcome are broadly the same, except that community batteries are stationary while EV batteries move around.

Community batteries can store electricity purchased from the grid during off-peak periods and then discharge it during peak periods. Neighbourhoods with solar power can charge community batteries in the middle of the day when solar-generated electricity is abundant and discharge during the higher-priced evening peak.

EV batteries can be used similarly, using cheaper night rates or periods of surplus wind during the night to charge. The energy stored in EV batteries can then be discharged into local loads or sold back into the grid when the price is highest, creating an additional revenue stream.

Modelling return on investment
In our modelling, we assumed the primary reasons people will invest in clean-energy technologies are sustainability, energy independence and resilience. We believe energy arbitrage could be an enabler of capital-intensive microgrids, as opposed to an investment made on a purely commercial basis.

Specifically, we considered a grid-connected microgrid integrating solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind turbines. The system is also backed by a community battery and has a fleet of 10 personal EVs to serve.

We considered two scenarios: one with grid arbitrage revenues and one without.

Our results suggest revenues procured explicitly from energy arbitrage could reduce the total cost of the system by at least 12 percent. To put this into perspective, for a typical NZ$10 million town-wide microgrid investment, this means $1.2 million in savings.

Another interesting finding was that the length of time the batteries were able to sustain critical loads during unplanned grid outages was greater by about 16 hours per year, compared to the case without intelligent control. This is a remarkable resilience advantage.

So what does this kind of analysis mean for you? If you are part of a community interested in owning and operating a microgrid, you now have enough evidence to ask your developer to consider energy arbitrage so the community can participate in the electricity market to make a profit.

If you own an EV and are trying to get cheaper night rates, this is a heads-up on future offerings from electricity retailers to get your storage-on-wheels to work with the vehicle-to-grid technology.

On the whole, energy arbitrage is an excellent tool to provide support for renewable energy investment decisions and help firm up revenue forecasts.

Dr Soheil Mohseni, postdoctoral research fellow in sustainable energy systems, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington and Dr Alan Brent, professor and chair in sustainable energy systems, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

In the same year that the government declared a climate emergency, imports of an especially dirty type of coal from Indonesia topped a million tonnes for the first time since 2006.

Last year, 235 kilograms of overseas coal was imported for every New Zealander in order to power homes and businesses. This is also only imported coal; the country also produces coal domestically.

Ninety-two percent of the imported coal was from Indonesia, and the vast majority of that was a low grade, high emissions type – sub-bituminous coal.

• READ MORE: Other reports on NZ’s climate emergency

“Not only are we burning more coal, [but] it’s the dirtiest coal. And it comes from Indonesia where the conditions and the mining is appalling,” said Cindy Baxter, an environmental campaigner.

In recent years, low lake levels meant our biggest electricity generator — hydroelectricity — has produced less energy than normal. Natural gas supply has been inconsistent. Coal has been increasingly used as a fuel of last resort to keep the lights on in our homes and businesses.

It is also the world’s worst fossil fuel, emitting far more greenhouse gases than any other. It produces carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxides, particulate pollution and heavy metals.

Coal imports from Indonesia in 2020 totalled 1.084 million tonnes, or just over one billion kilograms. Australia the only other significant exporter of coal here, sending over about 10 percent of Indonesia’s total, 95 million kilograms.

New Zealand has imported more than a million tonnes from Indonesia only twice in the last 20 years — 2020 and 2006.

Almost all of it last year — 910 million kilograms — was sub-bituminous coal which must be burned in greater quantities to achieve the same energy output.

Government not satisfied
An energy analyst at Enerlytica, John Kidd, said New Zealand’s reliance on this coal has undoubtedly raised greenhouse gas emissions.

“Yes it does. The fact that we’re importing a carbon-intensive fuel into the country and using it domestically to meet demand is carbon intensive. It will be adding significantly to our footprint here,” Kidd said.

On top of that, New Zealand measures and budgets for the emissions of burning of the coal. The emissions involved in getting that coal here by ship are not recorded nor fit into any country’s carbon budgets.

“The carbon miles involved with getting fuel from where it comes from and where it needs to be are generally not part of the equation. But absolutely they would be adding to the footprint involved with a higher coal burn in New Zealand.”

The government — which wants 100 percent of electricity supply to be renewable by 2030 — admits this is not good enough.

“Unfortunately fossil fuels continue to play a prominent role in security of electricity supply due to the structure of New Zealand’s electricity system, especially in providing cover for dry hydrological years, such as we have been experiencing,” said Energy and Resources Minister Dr Megan Woods.

“This government is not been [sic] satisfied with this reliance on fossil fuels and last year we backed up our goal to have a fully renewable electricity grid with a $30 million investigation into solving the dry year problem.

“The NZ Battery project is investigating the country’s potential for pumped hydro, as well as comparator technologies, and is progressing well but will take time.”

Baxter said the government’s aspirational goals on climate ring hollow.

‘Sick of hearing words’
“We’re sick of hearing the words. We need to see it turned into action and the government to stop being driven by industry, the biggest emitters,” Baxter said.

Even before the coal gets on the ship there is already a global environmental cost, including deforestation and the lack of reforestation once the mines are not used.

A journalist in Indonesia, Hans Nicholas Jong, said although there is mining regulation, the government doesn’t consistently enforce it.

“[There are] responsibilities for companies to rehabilitate their mines. Once they have finished operating they’re actually required by law to recover the environment. They’re required to reforest their areas, they’re required to close their mining pits. This is something they haven’t done because basically there is a lack of monitoring by the government, just because of the sheer number of mines.”

Indonesia is one of the world’s biggest producers of coal.

Despite public opposition, he said the government recently revised these laws, relaxing restrictions for mining companies which outraged activists.

“They saw that this new mining law really facilitates the mining industry, at a time when a lot of countries actually want to reduce their coal production and consumption. But here we doubled down on our coal production and consumption.”

Origin kept confidential
Precisely where we get our coal from has been masked by the government.

Since 2012, Stats NZ has kept confidential the type of coal and its origin. The public cannot know where we get our coal from. Importers can request their products be made confidential, which Stats approved in this case. It does release total coal imports.

RNZ sourced this data from United Nations figures.

“It’s indicative of the close relationship that the mining industry has had with our government. To be able to get that sort of information that is available internationally blocked in New Zealand arguing commercial sensitivity … the power of industry in this country over civil society is quite extraordinary,” Baxter said.

Coal makes up a large amount of our electricity. As an example – in the first quarter of this year, 44 percent of Genesis Energy’s total generation was from coal. The company has signed an agreement to receive natural gas from another company Methanex.

Woods said there has been an unexpected reduction in natural gas supply from at the Pohokura gas field, recently the country’s largest.

“At full capacity, Pohokura gas field provides approximately 40 percent of New Zealand’s natural gas supply but over the past 12 months, production from the field has almost halved.

Natural gas production down
“As a result, overall natural gas production is down approximately 20 percent on last year. While this decline has put pressure on the supply of gas for all users, including electricity generators, this is not something anyone could have foreseen and is not a result of Government decisions.

“The market responded as it was originally designed to, which included more use of coal at Huntly power station to provide the dry year cover that gas has previously provided to ensure security of supply.”

She said the energy sector has also committed over $1 billion in new renewable capacity this year alone, including both geothermal and wind energy plants. Another wind farm, Waipipi, opened last month, and the country’s biggest solar farm in Kapuni.

Woods was asked, if coal is necessary, why New Zealand couldn’t import it from a country with a stronger environmental record. She said these are business decisions made by privately-owned companies.

The government is a majority shareholder of each of Genesis, Mercury and Meridian energy companies.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Affordable energy enhances the livelihood of Pacific communities, says an associate professor in physics at the Fiji-based University of the South Pacific.

Dr Atul Raturi presented a seminar as part of the Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) seminar series about the use of solar energy in supporting sustainable development in the Pacific.

The deputy director of the centre, Dr Morgan Wairiu, said these seminars were a great opportunity for students to interact with.

“We encourage our students and staff to attend these to exchange their ideas and knowledge.

“At the same time are bringing the visibility of the programme to outside communities about what we are doing here at the centre.”

Dr Raturi’s seminar focused on global sustainable development goal SDG7 (access to affordable and clean energy). He said SDG7 was a main driver for many of the other development goals.

‘Trilemma’ challenge
He said Pacific Island countries face a”trilemma” – energy poverty, climate change impacts and extreme fossil fuel dependence.

As a result, communities are suffering from the effects such as having a lack of access to clean water.

Dr Raturi said renewable energy development can help tackle these three challenges.

He spoke of how solar PV was on the rise and some of the USP community solar projects as examples of sustainable development.

He said it was important to be having discussions with small communities to understand where their struggles were.

“The challenge of these projects is that we have a good heart and good intentions and we know what we want to do, but the community doesn’t want it because they have other priorities,” he said.

Creating an opportunity
Dr Raturi said listening to helps create an opportunity to collaborate with them on aiding their needs.

“We need to have a discussion with them and then together form a project. This is why a talanoa is very important.”

The USP community solar projects has seen success in several Fijian communities – one significant project regarding solar energy and water in Yanuca Island.

The community had no access to fresh water and through the project, a solar thermal desalination system was installed in March last year.

This system was described by Dr Raturi as “simple” as villagers just bring sea water and fill up a tank which is pumped using the solar energy, then producing fresh water.

“On a good sunny day, the system produces about 200 litres of drinking water,” he said.

The solar water pumping systems have also been installed for some Fijian schools – Batiri Lagi, Namau, Korotolutolu and Kubulau.

Shared message
Dr Raturi shared what one of the head mistresses at Namau School had said about the project:

“The supply of clean and safe water without any fuel costs is recognised by the community and the benefits will be felt by the future generations of children attending this school.”

He said it was important to recognise how solar energy could play a vital role in tackling climate stresses in the Pacific, achieving some of the sustainable development goals and also leading towards aspirations regarding the Paris agreement.

Hele Ikimotu and Blessen Tom are in Fiji as part of the Pacific Media Centre’s Bearing Witness 2018 climate change project. They are collaborating with the University of the South Pacific.

The problem with climate change – like any wicked problem – is that its story can be told in many different ways. The same goes for migration. The facts, as far as they go, can be conjured into a multitude of understandings.

Still, some stories are less credible than others. Michael Reddell’s recent analysis of migration and climate change in Newsroom is one.

That these vastly complex issues cross over at times is obvious: climate change leaves nothing untouched. But Reddell goes further by arguing that the Productivity Commission’s low emissions inquiry ought to treat immigration as a contributing factor to New Zealand’s rising greenhouse gas emissions; and that our national emissions targets should justify reduced inward migration.

His first argument is one of scale: “more people need more transport, more heating, more energy in their workplaces” – and hence more emissions.

Notably, though, he presumes current technologies and current prices. Not only does this misrepresent all likely futures, but also our actual past. The Ministry for the Environment’s most recent Greenhouse Gas Inventory 1990–2015 notes that energy emissions decreased in 2008–2011 and remained stable since, which is the same period that net migration rose steeply.

The Ministry attributes these reductions to decreased manufacturing emissions and increased renewable energy generation. We have more people, sure, but more people relying on our low-emissions energy. And what matters from the perspective of Earth’s atmosphere is what people emit, not where they emit it.

Emissions from transport, by contrast, have risen. Indeed, road transport emissions increased by 78 percent since 1990, offsetting those other reductions in fuel use.

Over-reliance on vehicles
But the fault here lies with New Zealand’s over-reliance on private vehicles. Migrants (and citizens) contribute to road traffic by necessity, because alternative means of transport are less available, indeed far less so than many migrants are used to, coming from places where travel by trains, trams, cycles and footpaths is not unusual.

If low-carbon alternatives in places like Auckland were more serviceable, migrants would doubtlessly use them, as indeed would citizens. And if the excuse for under-investment is the lack of markets of sufficient scale, then population increase and cultural change will drive progress.

Reddell’s second argument links migration to agricultural emissions. As I understand him, he argues that New Zealand’s high living standards depend upon dairy exports, which makes it politically infeasible to impose costs for environmental damages. The greater the population, the greater this reliance upon the dairy sector, and so the greater the reluctance to make polluters pay.

But it is bizarre to suggest that new and old New Zealanders – including those not employed in agriculture – rely so heavily on dairy for their standard of living. Sure, dairy is our largest export sector, but only 3.5 percent of total GDP.

Actually, many New Zealanders, including many farmers, rely on healthy environments for their standard of living, both in the non-economic sense of quality of life, and in the economic sense that tourism and exports benefit from New Zealand’s clean, green reputation. (Tourism, incidentally, accounts for 5.6 percent of total GDP.)

This is likely why – contra Reddell – a strong majority of New Zealanders (77 percent) do support water charges for agriculture and horticulture, despite the fiscal burden.

It is also misleading to treat economics and environment as a zero-sum game, as if one must lose out in order for the other to gain. It simply isn’t the case that internalising the environmental costs of agriculture necessarily undermines profitability.

Innovation proves point
Innovation within the dairy sector proves the point. Recently, Lincoln University’s demonstration farm reduced nitrate leaching by 30 percent without undermining affecting profitability.

This contradicts Reddell’s claim that “all informed observers recognise that the marginal abatement costs in New Zealand, through conventional means, are high”. I’ve written for Pure Advantage about the potential of forests – both production and permanent forests – to offset agricultural emissions in a way that isn’t only cost-effective but potentially profitable.

This is corroborated by other “informed observers”, such as the Royal Society of New Zealand, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and Vivid Economics. The latter’s Net Zero in New Zealand report highlights other low-cost opportunities in energy efficiency, heating technologies, agricultural efficiency, and technological advances in methane vaccines and cheaper electric vehicles.

What’s striking about all this is not only Reddell’s argument is from the perspective of climate change, but also economics. He resists the orthodox view that migration has a modest positive impact on national GDP.

I’m no enemy of disciplinary iconoclasm, but it does beg for robust positive arguments. Reddell’s appeals to uncertainty (economists cannot prove definitively that migration increases GDP, therefore it might not be true) do not count. Climate scientists are all too familiar with this kind of denial.

So if economic evidence cannot always carry his arguments, one can only conclude that non-economic reasons are doing some of the work. To Reddell’s credit, he is explicit about his concerns for cultural cohesion, or that “Islam is a threat to the West, and a threat to the church wherever it is found”.

These are real reasons for wanting to reduce immigration, but should be debated on their ethical and sociological merits, not couched in an idiosyncratic take on climate policy.

When it comes to global warming, it’s the carbon intensive economy, stupid. The only genuine solution is to transform the world’s high-emissions economies into low-emissions economies, so that anyone entering them by way of birth or migration can lead a prosperous low-carbon life.

Our national emissions targets are a means to this global end. Focusing on peripheral issues like migration only distracts from the work that needs to be done. But that’s what happens when you tell the story of a global problem through a nationalist lens.

David Hall is senior researcher at The Policy Observatory, AUT, where he researches migration and climate policy. He is also editor of the BWB Text, Fair Borders?: Migration Policy in the Twenty-First Century. This article is republished with the author’s permission.

Celebrating 100 years of oil shale mining may represent a proud moment for Estonia, but this doesn’t compare to what the country has lost, many environmentalists say.

The backbone of Estonia’s electricity production may have allowed the Baltic nation to escape from beneath the Soviet yoke and become energy self-sufficient post-independence in 1991, but most observers remember that this has come at a cost: the environment.

“In terms of ecology it’s a total disaster. From the point of view of state economy this is something to be proud of,” says Professor Mait Sepp, research fellow in physical geography at the University of Tartu.

“We have lost our wetlands, we have lost our streams.”

Many of Estonia’s environmental organisations agree, with more than 15 percent (504.6 km²) of the country’s Ida-Virumaa region severely damaged by the oil shale industry.

Mihkel Annus of the Estonian Green Movement says the sector still stamps the largest ecological footprint on the nation, despite European Union (EU) regulations.

’40 years like a volcano’
Perhaps the greatest reminder of this footprint will be the country’s ash mountains, huge piles of solid hazardous waste that mar Estonia’s relatively flat landscape.

“These will probably stay as the remnants of our fossil-fuel dependent past for centuries from now, as well as the land that has been excavated and already been exhausted,” says Annus.

Harmful to the environment due to the poisonous gases and various contaminants they emit into surface and groundwater, these mountains are not only viewed as an ecological disaster.

They have also dealt a blow to the country’s pockets.

It cost the government more than 36 million euros (about NZ$44.4 million) to close the infamous ash mountain in Kohtla-Järve, which stood approximately 170m above sea level before it was closed and made environmentally safe in 2015.

Estonia’s current environmental headache is the Kukruse ash mountain, which one official from the Ida-Viru County government describes as a 40-year-old “volcano”.

Hardi Murula, head of development and planning for the county government, says they have been engaged in ongoing talks for the past three to four years on how best to “neutralise” the mountain, but that no consensus has been reached.

“No one can guarantee during the restoration process that the pollution can be stopped.”

The closure of ash mountains throughout Ida-Virumaa is largely seen as positive despite the challenges, with one of the mountains in the former oil shale town of Kiviõli converted into an adventure centre in a joint industry-government project.

Piret Väinsalu of the Estonian Fund for Nature says the restoration of land is rather impossible, however.

“You can try to restore it into something, but it will always be there as a ‘heritage of oil shale age’.”

Legacy pollution
But government, industry and environmentalists do not see eye-to-eye on the source of this environmental damage.

Minister of Environment Marko Pomerants says much of the environmental impact is related to “legacy pollution” of the Soviet-era.

“Fortunately, most of the major negative effects are a thing of the past and the current oil shale sector has remarkably reduced its harmful practices for the environment.”

He says environmental concerns today largely involve emissions, although these have decreased since 2002.

Timo Tatar, head of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communication’s energy department, agrees.

“Talking about environmental damage, one can say, that oil shale environmental impact has significantly decreased due to heavy investments into new combustion technologies as well as emission control.”

Official 2014 data by the European Commission shows Estonia currently stands as the second highest emitter, per capita, of greenhouse gases in Europe, however, and its far from carbon-free history occupies a blight on their climate change record.

Although the EU’s Emissions Trading System allows the country to sell-off its emissions because they are lower than the country’s massive levels at 1990, things are far from rosy, especially in the wake of the 2015 Paris climate change agreement.

In light of this, environmentalists Annus, Väinsalu, and their colleague Aleksei Lotman, a marine conservation expert with the Estonian Fund for Nature, do not share officials’ view.

Although they agree the oil shale industry is “very much less polluting” than it was 30 years ago, they say making oil shale “environmentally friendly” is not enough.

To call current improvements by the oil shale industry so is “over-optimistic to say the least”, Lotman says.

A question of commitment
They are therefore critical of industry and government and feel both have failed to act effectively.

Väinsalu, who serves as the Estonian coordinator for the international non-profit network EKOenergia in her role with the Estonian Fund for Nature, says the government does “just enough” to be on a good list for Estonia’s European partners, while it simultaneously supports oil shale interests by lobbying for greater industry exemptions.

“Instead of understanding the need to find an alternative route and exit the oil shale era our government just supports the industry in every way possible.”

Eesti Energia, Estonia’s state-owned energy enterprise, refutes such claims and says it has taken several steps to reduce the environmental impacts of its operations.

“Today we can produce more energy from oil shale than in the past with less environmental impact,” says Eesti Energia.

Eesti Energia says introductions in new technology have been responsible, although physical changes have also occurred.

Among these was the 2008 closure of the ash field at their Balti power plant near Narva, in Estonia’s east.

The project took three years to complete and resulted in 570ha being made safe for the environment.

In 2013, Eesti Energia’s sister company, Enefit, opened a 17-turbine wind park on the former ash field.

“Our main focus lies in replacing fossil fuels with cleaner fuels,” Eesti Energia says.

The company adds it already does so through its use of water, wind, and biomass.

Annus, however, as a member of one of Estonia’s most influential environmental organisations, feels industry may not have been as cooperative as it makes out.

“Whether they would make their processes more environment-friendly voluntarily, is questionable.”

He says this is because the oil shale industry has been put under increasing pressure by tightening EU regulations.

“They have been forced to take action to meet the set concentration values of emissions, changing the technology of landfilling of solid and hazardous waste, limiting water pollution, and so on.”

Annus adds much of Estonia’s oil shale industry happens behind closed doors, which further calls into question their transparency.

“A lot of the region has also been blocked off from the public eye.”

Kaja Peterson, director of the Stockholm Environment Institute Tallinn Centre’s (SEI Tallinn) climate and energy programme, says Eesti Energia has, in fact, been rather open.

“I think Eesti Energia has been very flexible because they reformed and created a new sister company, Enefit Renewable Energy.”

She points out, however, that Eesti Energia is gradually transitioning to renewables and oil shale, unfortunately, still forms the majority of their operations.

Fossil free future?
This seeming unwillingness on the part of officials to divest from oil shale has led to serious doubts about Estonia’s renewable future.

While the government and oil shale industry remain positive, environmentalists and researchers are sceptical.

They claim there is no direct investment or clear political will in renewables by the government, only some will to diversify.

“There have been measures to promote sustainable energy, but the indirect subsidies for fossil fuels have still been greater,” Annus emphasises.

Annus feels Estonia is lagging behind a large portion of their EU counterparts and trendsetters, while Tatar and Pomerants celebrate Estonia reaching its Renewable Energy Directive target – 25 percent of renewables in final energy consumption – well before the 2020 deadline.

“Since the political target has been achieved there is no political motivation to increase that,” Peterson says.

Peterson’s colleague, Lauri Tammiste, SEI Tallinn’s director, says the shift to a low-carbon economy remains on the official agenda.

He highlights plans by the government to reach 50 percent of renewables and lower CO₂ emissions by 2030, although there will be a challenge.

“The main issue is, how to actually deliver these goals and ensure successful transformation with biggest possible environmental, economic and social benefits.”

When asked whether Estonia would have a fossil free future, Sepp was adamant he would not see change in his lifetime.

“No. Not in the near future.

It’s very convenient to use this old system. You have one system which works and to build a new one …. takes a lot of money and a lot of effort. Some very critical changes must happen to change this system.”

It seems clear, for the time being at least, that Estonia’s energy future remains far more carbon intensive than environmentalists would like.

Feature article by Kendall Hutt; photos by Essi Lehto and Lukas Rusk. The assignment was part of the Inclusive Journalism Project collaboration between journalism schools in New Zealand and Scandinavia.

Looking back at 2016, it’s easier to come up with a list of bad things that happened than good: Brexit, Trump and the rise of post-truth politics; the Syrian disaster, and the subsequent European bungling of the influx of refugees; and China and Russia flexing their military muscles on the borders of Europe and in the South China Sea.

Closer to home in the United States for wind we have the Brazilian political and economic disaster leading to zero auctions for new capacity; continued increase in the outrageous curtailment in China; and corruption at the highest level in South Africa trying to kill the renewables industry just as it starts to bloom. The list could be much longer.

But there is plenty to be positive about as well: record low onshore prices in Morocco (less than $0.03/kWh); 12 months ago in Argentina we had nothing — now there’s a solid 1.4GW pipeline, which will be added to in 2017; despite the politics, the US industry is arguably healthier than it’s ever been, with record capacity under construction; the Australian market has come back to life; and amid the general European malaise, offshore prices have cratered in the past six months. Offshore wind’s prospects are now brighter than ever, not least because prices make it likely that the industry will expand outside of Europe in earnest in the coming years.

So what’s in store for 2017?

First of all, the US: the only thing I can say at this point is that I don’t know what they’re going to do, and I don’t believe that they do either.

Donald Trump has now appointed a bunch of climate-denying billionaires as his key cabinet nominees — the confirmation hearings will be interesting; and in his “conciliatory” New York Times interview, he spewed such a load of nonsense about wind power it’s hard to know where to start.

On the bright side, energy secretary nominee Rick Perry is the former governor of Texas, and in that role at least was a big wind supporter. More than 80 percent of US wind installations are in Republican congressional districts, and key Senate figures have vowed to oppose any moves to undo the production tax credit deal done last December.

Whether that resolve will hold in the face of the coming whirlwind remains to be seen. Given the level of construction activity at present we would expect 2017 to be a good year for the US market.

Both the International Energy Agency’s Medium-Term Renewable Energy Market Report 2016 and the World Energy Outlook 2016 are quite bullish on the outlook for wind power in the medium to longer term — to the point where the IEA’s 450 scenario is beginning to look a lot like our Global Wind Energy Outlook’s moderate scenario.

The wind industry and the IEA’s outlook have moved a lot closer over the past several years, and I’m happy to say that most of the movement has been on their side.

That said, it is still curious that for the short to medium term, the IEA’s scenarios always posit that the year that has just finished will be the largest market ever for wind power, and 2016 and 2017 are no exception, with predictions of double-digit drops from 2015 market levels for both years.

In the world’s largest market for wind, the downward revision in China’s feed-in tariffs at the beginning of 2018 means there will be another rush of installations in 2017 to beat the deadline. The move to shut down coal plants and even cancel some plants under construction will not solve the curtailment problem in China, although it may help a bit; and the ongoing  “airmageddon” in Beijing and elsewhere only boosts the call for clean energy as the country wrestles with its killer air pollution.

The cancellation of Brazil’s auction in December was the latest signal that its wind industry is another potential victim of the political and economic crisis that has occupied the country for the past year. As a result of the stringent local-content requirement attached to the only realistically available Real-denominated financing (from the BNDES national development bank), many OEMs have invested in factories in Brazil. But now that demand has dried up (temporarily, I believe), those investments are at risk.

Looking south to the burgeoning market in Argentina, the Brazilian industry is hoist on its own petard, because its local-content requirements make Brazilian-made turbines uncompetitive. It’s going to be a couple of very hard years in Brazil. Even though the build-out from the previous auctions will keep the installation numbers up for 2017 and a bit beyond, without new orders the supply chain will start to fall apart.

The refusal of South Africa’s state-owned utility Eskom to sign power-purchase agreements for the fourth round of the REIPPPP tenders for more than 18 months now is just another facet of the moral and political bankruptcy of the Zuma government. The publication (four years late) of the updated Integrated Resource Plan shows clearly that the cheapest and cleanest way forward for South Africa is based on wind, solar and a little gas, with no need for nuclear until 2037, if ever. However, shortly after its publication, Eskom defiantly put out a tender for a new nuclear plant. There are many other narratives at play in this unfolding drama, but it will probably get sorted out during the course of 2017 and the market will flourish again.

Elsewhere, we see strong markets developing across South America, especially in Argentina, Chile and Peru. Mexico continues with its own energy revolution, and the Canadian government’s rediscovered commitment (pipelines and tar sands notwithstanding) to the climate issue bodes well for that market.

If India is able to recover from the government’s spectacularly disastrous attempt to flush the “black” money out of the system — the so-called demonetisation exercise — then we should see a strong market in 2017, following on from significant market growth in 2016.

There are also stirrings in Vietnam, Indonesia, Iran, Colombia, Senegal, and elsewhere across Africa, Asia and Latin America, which should be enough to occasionally distract us from the political messes in Europe and the US.

But we will inevitably be preoccupied with Trump. After signing on to a letter to President Barack Obama in late 2009 saying, “We support your effort to ensure meaningful measure to control climate change… if we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet”, Trump spent most of the campaign talking about climate change as a Chinese hoax. Go figure.

The response of most of the rest of the countries at last year’s climate summit in Marrakech was that they were moving ahead regardless of the US. The Chinese delegation emerged as the somewhat reluctant global leaders of the climate effort, and reminded Trump that the establishment of the IPCC and the beginning of multilateral efforts on the climate issue were instigated by US president Ronald Reagan and UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

Post-truth politics, indeed.

Steve Sawyer is secretary-general of the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC).