Dr Kelvin Kemm: Alice in Hydrogen Land

At a shopping mall or amusement park one can see vendors selling balloons filled with Helium. Kids love them and dance around trailing their balloons, which float above them. From time to time some kid accidentally lets go and you see the balloon soaring high into the sky, to the delight of many watching, but to the heartbreak of the kid. The balloon soars up into the sky because it is filled with Helium, and Helium is a gas much lighter than the Oxygen and Nitrogen which make up most of the atmosphere.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 24/4/24

At a time of media turmoil, Melissa had nothing to proclaim as Minister – and now she has been demoted

Melissa Lee – as may be discerned from the screenshot below – has not been demoted for doing something seriously wrong as Minister of Media and Communications.

To the contrary, her career has been besmirched by her failure to do anything – an accomplishment embarrassingly recorded on a blank sheet on the official government website (which was updated this afternoon to remove her name from the page).

Point of Order: Windfall taxes on power companies may not be a good idea when advancing towards decarbonising the economy

Meridian Energy has chosen Australian resource firm Woodside Energy as its preferred partner to develop a green hydrogen project in Southland.

Meridian CEO Neil Barclay expects broad, future economic gains from the project.

“We believe a large-scale hydrogen and ammonia facility in Southland, focused on the export market, will accelerate the development of a domestic hydrogen economy and strengthen NZ’s platform to contributing to decarbonising our transport and industrial sectors”.

Point of Order: Windfall taxes on power companies may not be a good idea when advancing towards decarbonising the economy

Meridian Energy has chosen Australian resource firm Woodside Energy as its preferred partner to develop a green hydrogen project in Southland.

Meridian CEO Neil Barclay expects broad, future economic gains from the project.

Point of Order: Why the government should be working on a hydrogen strategy

Point of Order a week ago was serving up some commentary on the news that the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter will not shut down in 2024 — and could have a long-term future.

The question now is whether Meridian Energy, which supplies the bulk of Tiwai Point’s electricity from the big Manapouri station, will be willing to do so without a price hike. The last price negotiation was difficult, with Rio Tinto using the threat of closure to screw the price down.