It seems clear that the Government refused to do anything to stop Winston Pulp from closing its mills. And the Government’s plans to address price volatility by the use of LPG is counterproductive, especially when the cost of renewable energy is considered.
Energy Minister Simeon Brown is peddling lies about a gas shortage. The country exports around 40 percent of its annual gas production as methanol. More is used to make synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, a nasty greenhouse emission source, for our farms. We don’t need expensive LNG distribution facilities while exporting the bulk of our own gas.
Shane Jones, went onto radio yesterday and pledged a solution to high power prices. What are his chances and why are we in this mess?
It was always going to happen but it still rankles that an attempt to get farming to at least confront the damage it causes to the climate is being put on hold.
There is a bill before Parliament right now that has the potential of blowing a rather big hole in our reputation as an open and transparent democracy.
Government members of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee have managed to vote to support a Labour amendment that would make electric vehicles more attractive but submit a report to Parliament that suggested that the amendment had been lost.
An expanding Middle East war that puts the Red Sea and Suez tanker route at risk is a major risk to us because it could hit the global price of oil.
What will New Zealand look like if Act forms part of the next Government?
How come New Zealand got to build an entire electricity generating system that lasted for 70 years without much private capital from one massive dam to geothermal and all those pylons and substations and network systems without Blackrock?
Some big news yesterday as the Government announced a deal with US Investment Firm Blackrock for a $2 billion fund for renewable electricity projects.
This government has within its power the ability to alter the crippling cost of living increases we now face. If they don’t do the political job they can do with prices, they will lose power at the election.
National has proposed RMA reform as the basis for accelerating the roll out of renewable energy generation. It appears that it has never met a problem for which the solution is either a tax cut or RMA reform.
Vector has received a warning letter from the Commerce Commission for attempting to artificially boost the value of assets so that price increases for power could be imposed.
Can humans decouple resource overuse from economic growth?
FIRST Union, NZCTU, and 350 Aotearoa have just released a joint report suggesting that the privatisation of our power companies by National were not only disastrous for the country’s finances but also disastrous for the planet.
We need more mines if we are to transition to low carbon. There’s a field of industry that National and Labour could readily […]
The Russian invasion of the Ukraine has cost tens of thousands of people their lives, millions of people their homes, seriously disrupted billions of people, and increased the threat of nuclear war but there are positive developments coming from it.
This COVID era is the decade in which the state is back, bigger and faster than ever before. But the one area this government won’t let the state expand again is the one area in which New Zealand is the most vulnerable: electricity generation. It needs to change.
Many European governments now face a perfect storm of threatened energy security, rising inflation, war-propelled refugee crisis, and climate objectives. New Zealand be warned.
Europe is leading the global fight against climate change by rapidly shifting away from fossil fuels. This now includes fully renationalising energy companies and forced decreases in gas use. What could New Zealand learn?
Every part of our energy-dense life from plastic to tarmac to food to clothes to building materials is about to get smashed like we ain’t seen.
RNZ’s “The Detail” asked are New Zealand’s sanctions against Russia working? They aren’t, but one detail we learnt that MFAT has 100 staff members assigned to sorting out their complications!! What a waste.
The commercial parts of Russia’s state will do very well with plenty of customers remaining for its oil and gas. It’s $3-$4 a litre 91 everyone. Everything else in Russia is ruined.
There is only so much New Zealand and its government can do to soften the blows of the instability that are besetting the world. And the problem is without dramatic change New Zealand will remain one of the most car-addicted, petrol reliant societies on earth for several decades to come.
New Zealand’s sanctions on Russia have not stopped the war in Ukraine. They may have made our parliamentarians feel better, and Tony Blinken was quick to congratulate us on falling into line with the US “high-impact sanctions.” The language is combative, but the evidence shows sanctions do not work. They can have significant blow-back effects, particularly if not combined with effective diplomacy.
Only rarely does a book truly change the world. In the nineteenth century, such a book was Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. For the twentieth century, it was The Limits to Growth.
Where will the votes come from to get Labour a third term?
The entity making the most money out of threatening the Ukraine is the Russian Federation government itself. Follow the money.
Ministers Wood, Shaw and Parker (Energy, Climate Change, and RMA reform respectively), must pull their eyes downward from the misty clouds of climate change and stuff multiple decades away and down into the jagged, shadowy deal-by-deal path of the transition to clean energy.
Minister Woods and Prime Minister Ardern have been reduced to asking a series of questions about why Transpower got major electricity providers to drastically cut power last night.
New Zealand is about to enter a transition phase in energy that’s going to affect absolutely everyone.
In this series so far I’ve examined three of the four terms in the Kaya Identity, population, economic intensity, and energy intensity. It […]
Population has always been a critical driver of events and prior to the Industrial Revolution we lived in a zero sum world, with […]
For those who don’t trawl through all the comments; a little personal background. I’ve been fortunate enough to have just finished up a […]
Our Clean Energy Plan is the first part of our transformational proposal to end the use of fossil fuels in Aotearoa. It will help to ensure our grandchildren inherit a world where they can not only survive, but thrive.
BP yesterday sent a really big message that effectively now, Covid-19 is the break that tips the world away from oil dependence.
