Yesterday Genesis, Mercury, Meridian, and Contact announced they're going to stockpile up to 600,000 tonnes of coal to keep the lights on at Huntly power station.
The deal needs Commerce Commission's approval so it doesn't look like they're colluding on price, but the idea struck a deal, which still needs Commerce Commission approval, to keep the lights on at Huntly.
The coal gives them a back up for times when we're low on electricity, when the lake levels are low, and the wind isn't blowing.
Huntly is the largest electricity generation site in the country. It needs fuel to run on.
Eventually, they'd like it to be all biomass and green, friendly fuels. But in the meantime, they need something reliable to keep things chugging along so as we avoid another energy crunch like last year when spot prices went berserk because we realised how little gas have in this country.
And queue the predicable outcries of disbelief and feigned shock from some quarters in reaction.
Including those climate protesters, who I can only assume are still disrupting operations at the Stockton mine in the South Island.
Last I saw, there was some woman up there in the bucket, health and safety be damned, zooming into a call with a journalist. Surrounded by a plethora of plastic in things like cabling, cell phones, battery packs, tools, even a helmet, she explained that coal was evil and would eventually ruin kill the planet.
Never mind the fact her presence in the bucket meant workers were now having to truck their coal from one site to another using diesel, rather than the aerial rope pulley system whose bucket she and her plastic fantastic friends were occupying.
No shame either, apparently, about a helicopter flying in, on AV gas, to check on the protesters after a bit of rain.
The reality is this. Nobody's saying coal is amazing and is the only solution to our problem and let's burn it till we all burn.
They're just saying, we need this reliable fuel to tide us over till we don't need it anymore.
If the choice is to either burn coal or have a cold shower, I know what I'd be doing.
And let's not forget that even if we did stop digging up coal and using it to heat our homes occasionally, some other country would be just that anyway.
Ryan Bridge is a New Zealand broadcaster who has worked on many current affairs television and radio shows. He currently hosts Newstalk ZB's Early Edition - where this article was sourced.
10 comments:
We are being dictated to by the deluded. Climate Alarmism is a twisted religion that has spooked the politicians into supporting the greatest lie ever told. It stands between economic success or destitution, fuelled by their green energy fantasy.
Protesters like this think they have the smarts, know better than the scientists, and should dictate how the country is run.
Pity they can't find alternative sources of quality coal closer to Huntly. Perhaps they need a team of experts to investigate this to find a long term solution. Bat shit bonkers is now the new norm. The Kiwi is almost extinct.
They can and they have.
There is still coal in Huntly West Mine, just over the hill behind the power station.
It once fed the station by conveyor belt.
But that was when State Mines operated and before Jacinda banned gas exploration.
Now we import coal (poor quality brown coal) from Indonesia - so that’s a good idea?!
I agree that the science is not as settled as everyone thought a decade ago. A few reactions:
1. Climate change is occurring, but not in such devastating fashion as we were led to believe
2. The role of carbon dioxide is perhaps less forcing in high concentrations than previously assumed
3. Mankind has the scientific and technological capacity to adapt and address the particular problems that emerge for disadvantaged communities; for example, provision of safe drinking water for populations in arid regions
4. Clean technologies often are not so clean.
However, the extent of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions to the overall increase in carbon dioxide is very significant and the sun's activity accounts only for the summer-winter oscillations.
In the end, New Zealand is a very small emitter, and damaging ourselves economically to demonstrate that we are good global citizens will prove counterproductive.
That said, we must reduce our emissions gradually over the next decades - but NetZero is unrealistic.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWn4bWr5IH4
David Lillis
Coal is amazing. There, Ryan, I said it. Without coal, the industrial revolution would not have happened. It powered steam engines, ships and trains. The boilers of industry. It burns hotter and more efficiently than biofuels (wood by another name) and generates more energy. Why wouldn’t we use it? It’s been demonised by the morons like that lady in the bucket at Stockton, who have no appreciation for how much she has in life, that is due to coal. And Stockton mines coal that is blended with other coal to make steel, not to power the Huntly power plant. It burns far too hot for that. But she, and you, Ryan, don’t seem to know that.
Get a big hose and soak the people in the bucket. They won’t last long, cold, wet and 40ft in the air.
Let the buggers freeze then advise them that there’s a nice warm coal fire waiting for them.
Oh dear, can’t have that !
David Lillis, could you please come up with a simple, logical reason why "we must reduce our emissions gradually", given what you wrote immediately above that statement?
Here’s the reality, for 23 years kids have been dumbed down in the country with a crap education system. The result of that rubbish education is poor thinking, poor results, poor productivity, I could go on.
If you did science at school and learned physics you learned about thermodynamics, heat, energy, power.
There are very good reasons coal is used in power stations and we are just now learning the lessons we knew 40 years ago.
This country will need coal for many decades to come, if the politicians were brave enough they would ditch the climate net zero nonsense and focus on what works not fanciful expensive pipedreams.
The importing of coal from Indonesia is just plain dumb, illogical, and silly eco thinking.
Huntley sits on coal field and that's the reason the power plant is there.
Use the local coal, bring trains of it up from Southland, whatever, - it makes more sense than importing in from halfway around the world.
Think about it - this is only a stop gap measure until either fission or fusion power comes on stream.
Coal is only a short term solution - nukes are the long term answer.
Meanwhile tonight I am keeping warm using stored solar energy - firewood, returning absorbed CO2 to the atmosphere from where it came a couple of years ago.
No different to burning coal from millions of years ago.
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