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Bob Bingham Blog page.

A series of opinion pieces on, mostly climate change and related subjects to do with New Zealand.

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New Zealand emissions.

21/12/2014

5 Comments

 
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At the recent Lima climate talks New Zealand did not do very well and the minister for climate change Tim Groser made a poor job of explaining why we had such a poor performance.

The perception within NZ is that the National government is only playing lip service to climate change by promoting ourselves as clean and green while continuing to promote fossil fuels with road transport and oil exploration.


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.The root of the problem is that NZ does not burn coal to make electricity and has 85% renewable energy, with gas as a quick top up to balance supply and demand. Our transport uses oil for fuel and here we are the same as most other nations. 
The area we have problems with is our seven million dairy farming cows, three point five million beef cattle and thirty million sheep so that we have ten million cattle against a population of four million people and it is an expanding industry.
Unless we are going to stop dairy farming or can find a way to export their methane emissions with the dairy products and meat, we are stuck with it..

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The only area left to make savings is in our transport. The National government has bought some electric trains for Auckland but has no idea what to do with the rest of the extensive railway network.  The network is not in very god condition so it needs serious money spending to modernise it as, currently, it moves a few logs to ports and that is about it.

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The electrical generating companies and the government  should have a big interest in transport as their business is on a plateau and they need new markets. NZ has an oil import bill of five billion a year and oil is a diminishing resource with a volatile price which makes it vulnerable to competition.

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If the electrical generating companies joined forces and collectively bought the railways operations and, with the involvement of the government, converted the network to electricity we could achieve several objectives. 
We could reduce our dependence on oil as our sole fuel for transport, reduce our CO2 emissions, reduce our oil import bill and the electricity companies would open up a whole new market.

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We do not need to worry about our oil companies as oil will be needed for many years and its price will increase as its scarcity and cost of extraction increases.

Electric cars have an increasingly important future and some countries are trialling hire cars at rail terminals so that the commuter can reach his destination quickly and independently.


There is a whole new transport system in its infancy, in Europe in particular, and we need to be making the first steps to embrace it. 


5 Comments
Robert Bristow
2/1/2015 03:31:24 am

Hi and happy new year,

I've read that a lot of study is going into reducing methane output by N.Z's livestock (by diet and breeding), and the country is well resourced to provide renewable energy (geothermal, persistent trade winds and strong ocean movement), so is well positioned for a carbon free energy future. I do not like to get involved in politics too much, but would like to see our government set an example on transport, I know one political party has that in their manifesto (refreshing the crown fleet with E.V's). I agree with David Attenborough's latest media release:-

"The awful thing is that people in authority and power deny that, when the evidence is overwhelming and they deny it because it’s easier to deny it – much easier to deny it’s a problem and say ‘we don’t care’.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/david-attenborough-leaders-are-in-denial-about-climate-change-9953302.html

Reply
Bob Bingham.
2/1/2015 07:10:09 am

Happy New Year Bob.trying to convert a countries transport to electricity is a big task but in a country as small as ours it is possible to reach influential people. I had an interview with the MD of one of our electricity companies and he is on the case. I know that the Green Party has it on their manifesto but it is a big task.It makes good economic sense as we have renewable electricity in abundance and a $5 billion a year oil import bill. Even so its a big step to make it policy. If NZ can't do it who can?

Reply
Robert Bristow
3/1/2015 02:21:09 pm

Good news today from Auckland's Sylvia Park shopping mall, free E.V charging and cost effective solar park has gone live today ..

Could this be the start ... ??

http://www.3news.co.nz/business/aucklands-sylvia-park-goes-solar-2015010319

http://www.sylviapark.org/ev_charging_stations

Reply
Nick
17/4/2015 02:43:09 pm

Yes, it's certainly very do-able to go 100% renewable electricity and convert transport to electric as well. Amazingly, Kiwirail is currently considering replacing electric trains with diesel ones! http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/better-business/67536741/kiwirail-costsaving-plan-nuts

Also, I should note that we do still use coal for generating electricity at Huntly, so closing that should be a priority. I think some of the cogen is also coal. For a daily look at how we're generating electricity, have a look here: http://www.em6live.co.nz/Default.aspx

Reply
Bob Bingham
18/4/2015 09:27:28 am

Hello Nick. Thanks for your comment. I had misread the Contact energy statement and was under the impression that they had mothballed the two coal fired boilers and were using three boilers on gas. The point that I am trying to make is that there are not many places for NZ to go in reducing greenhouse gasses. We could stop dairy farming, not likely, or convert our transport to renewable s. Planting trees we are going to cut down in twenty years is a fools errand. Bob

Reply



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    Bob Bingham 

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