There are many people in New Zealand proposing a move to a much greener economy and they all seem to believe that a move to alternative forms of energy such as wind and solar electricity are the future for our country with the resultant moves away from the use of fossil fuels.
Given the current government’s moves away from the use of fossil fuels for generation of electricity, the ban on any further oil or gas exploration we will need to develop much more capacity for sustainable generation from solar and wind power.
With the benefit of hindsight and looking back a couple of years to the situation where New Zealand was almost totally reliant on fossil fuelled generation, caused by the lack of hydro generation capacity due to drought conditions, and taking into account current global warming effects we are going to need to develop a significant increase in sustainable generation if we are going to keep the lights on in the future.
Just recently we came very close to having rolling power cuts as a regular thing due to the lack of supply from hydro generation or wind generation. There was one incident in August 2021 where power cuts were instigated due to a lack of availability of electricity supply.
While we have stopped mining coal in New Zealand for power generation we haven’t actually stopped burning coal for generation. We have just exported the detrimental environmental effects of mining by sourcing coal imported from Indonesia.
We are importing millions of tonnes of dirty coal from Indonesia so that our thermal station at Huntly can continue to supply the power required to keep the lights on.
So the fact of the matter is that we will still need to use thermal generation for some time to come or face rolling blackouts at times.
Our politicians are shutting down the use of coal fired industrial plants throughout NZ to help save the planet!!! – Yeah Right!
Here’s a small sample of how many coal fired electricity generation plants there are in the world.
The EU has 468 plants building 27 more for a total of 495
Turkey has 56 plants building 93 more total 149
South Africa has 79 building 24 more total 103
India has 589 building 446 more total 1036
Philippines has 19 building 60 more total 79
South Korea has 58 building 26 more total 84
Japan has 90 building 45 more total 135
China has 2363 building 1171 more total 3534
Currently China is promoting coal-fired power generation as the ruling Communist Party tries to revive a sluggish economy, prompting warnings Beijing is setting back efforts to cut climate-changing carbon emissions from the biggest global source.
Official plans call for boosting coal production capacity by 300 million tons this year, according to news reports. That is equal to 7 per cent of last year’s output of 4.1 billion tons, which was an increase of 5.7 per cent over 2020.
The ruling party also is building power plants to inject money into the economy and revive growth that sank to 4 per cent over a year earlier in the final quarter of 2021, down from the full year’s 8.1 per cent expansion.
China is the top producer and consumer of coal. China accounts for 26.1 per cent of global emissions according to the World Resources Institute. Rhodium Group, a research firm, says China emits more than all developed economies combined.
China has abundant supplies of coal and produced more than 90 per cent of the 4.4 billion tons it burned last year. More than half of its oil and gas is imported and leaders see that as a strategic risk. Coal is expected to supply 60 per cent of its power in the near future.
China’s coal-fired power plants operate at about half their capacity on average, but building more creates jobs and economic activity, even if the power isn’t needed now.
Given the risks both Physical (rolling blackouts) and economical (reduction in export returns) that may result from our government’s decision to phase out the use of fossil fuels and the total emission reductions that we may achieve, when we compare this to the situation in China it makes this decision look very high risk for New Zealand for very little gain.
Particularly in the light of Section 2 of the Paris Accord that stipulates that any reductions in emissions should not affect food production.
New Zealand emissions are approximately 0.17% of the global total whereas China produces 26.1%.