This country's leadership tells us burning natural gas emits less greenhouse gases than other fossil fuels! Going by Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon's quotes to the media, it’s a simple matter of exchanging natural gas for coal to solve our energy problems, says forestry stalwart, jim Childerstone.
Mr Luxon goes on... "The bottom line is, less gas means more coal. More coal means higher emissions because coal has around twice the carbon intensity of natural gas for the same amount of energy.”
This has led to Cabinet consents for the construction of facilities to import Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) somewhere in this country. Also to fast track consents for local mining, Jim continues.
What brought this on was the regular shortage of electricity, mainly due to low lake levels for hydrogeneration during drought periods.
If this is the current administration's simplistic remedy then any hope of achieving carbon zero by 2030, or 2050 or even by 2100 will be a lost cause.
After all natural gas is just another finite fossil fuel.
LNG is not to be confused with methane gas capture from landfills, food waste/septic tank systems and vegetative residues from crops.
And there has been a steady increase in boiler conversions among public institutions and businesses from coal to wood chip biomass ranging up to 20 megawatts (mgw) of energy - mostly space heating.
Over the past few years of power shortages we have been shy of some 500 megawatts (mgw) of power leading to potential cuts, and we had been importing nearly half a million tonnes of coal from Indonesia per year.
What Luxon's Cabinet needs to learn is that, apart from solar, wind and biofuel developments, our CRIs have been researching forms of renewable energy. That is until more recent funding cuts.
To read more from Jim Childerstone, get your copy of the November 2024 edition of NZ Logger magazine, on sale from 4 November. Check the link on this page to subscribe to either a printed or digital copy (or both).
