Bathurst Resources’ (BRL) shareholders were treated to a tale from fantasy land last week. The fantasy is that Bathurst’s newly acquired coal exploration permit near Waimate will service Fonterra’s expanding Studholme milk drying plant, reported an energy trade news service.

What Bathurst doesn’t appear to understand is that the new Studholme plant is never going to be built. At their consent hearing a year ago Fonterra downgraded their grandiose plan from a ten-fold expansion of the current setup to a four-fold one, but even that will now never go ahead. There isn’t the milk – cow numbers are down by about half a million and those would have to be restored before even the existing capacity would be fully used.

Much can change in a year; public opinion for one. New Zealanders have had enough of shit in our rivers and aquifers. Public opinion is firming against more cows – even against the number we have now. The evidence about water keeps mounting and being better understood.

Fonterra are feeling that. They themselves reported in big type in a farming paper a few months ago that their capital works programme is now complete. The Studholme expansion is a fizzer.

Is Bathurst trying to claim to potential investors that it has bright prospects? “Build it (mine it) and they will come”?

Public opinion is also firming against coal. We cannot keep burning coal and meet our agreed commitments on climate change. We cannot keep burning coal and hold any kind of integrity on the world stage. We cannot keep burning coal while people around the world die because of climate change.

Bathurst dance around this moral dilemma in their latest piece of fabricated nonsense: “We have employed a strategy of developing assets as close to existing or future markets for a number of years, as evidenced by our Canterbury Coal mine,” he [CEO Richard Tacon] says. “This is an extension of that strategy. This reduces transport distance from source to use and saves cost but also reduces the greenhouse gas footprint of the industrial use.”

While Fonterra still use coal in every one of their factories in the South Island, peak cow is over. Even Fonterra see that. Bathurst is trying to talk up a dud.

Fonterra’s coal use is the only reason Bathurst exists. Pretty soon Bathurst will have to find their way out of fantasy land and back to reality. A new coal mine is as much use as tits on a bull.

The post New Bathurst coal mine as much use as tits on a bull appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

CANA has said repeatedly that our analysis is that the plant will never be built. There is no incentive to expand dairying, especially irrigated dairying, at a milk price less than $6.50/kg MS. At that price there are lower cost producers overseas ready to move into the market ahead of us.

Last week Auckland Coal Action’s very effective and funny action Stop the Greenwash outside Fonterra’s head office led to a visit from their PR staff, one of whom told them the coal-guzzling Studholme would not be built for lack of milk.

We wish we could have saved those hard working farmers the millions their company put into the planning process for a consent they don’t need. Peak milk anyone?

But while Fonterra may have bailed out on their Studholme plans, they are still the company most responsible for keeping the New Zealand coal industry afloat. That’s why the CANA Summerfest, January 2017 is being held in Ashburton in mid-Canterbury, right in Fonterra’s heartland, where the connection between dairying’s rampant appetite for water, its rampant appetite for coal, and its contribution to the alarming growth in methane emissions is very evident.

Registrations are now open – email coalactionnetwork@gmail.com if you’re interested in attending, and we’ll get back to you with registration details very soon!

The post CANA Calls It Right: Fonterra’s Studholme Plant Unlikely To Be Built appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

Well, actually CANA doesn’t care whether Fonterra uses wood or not. If it finds a way to dry milk with moonbeams, that’s fine by us. What it mustn’t do is keep using coal, let alone expanding it, or expand its gas use.

We’ve been promoting waste wood from forestry because that is abundant, it’s renewable as long as forests are replanted, the technology to burn it is mature, it is found around the country, and we have the local expertise. So, ever helpful, we are getting alongside Fonterra and trying to find a good alternative for them. But the bottom line is, coal must go, and so must gas soon after.

Outside its Edendale dairy factory in Southland, Fonterra gets a clear message.

Our campaign is having an effect – faster than we expected.

After hearing our evidence (well, our witness Peter Fraser’s evidence) at the Studholme consent hearing that prices are not going to rise enough to make new or expanded dairy farms profitable, and so there will be no milk for the proposed plant to dry, Fonterra has half accepted our argument and dropped one of their two proposed driers. That’s 270,000 new cows they were sure a few weeks ago they had to provide for, which they now agree are not going to materialise. So where is their evidence that the other 270,000 will?

On wood, after previously offering a range of excuses as to why it wasn’t feasible, they now say they agree with us – there has to be a transition away from coal and they are exploring the use of wood. (They have actually been doing this for several years with no obvious progress.)

They propose to start their transition away from coal by building a huge new mainly coal-fired milk dryer. (What? Yes, you read this right.) But it will be capable of burning up to 20% wood in the fuel mix. Their reason for not going to 100% wood? They say there is not enough wood available, but have produced no analysis or figures to back this up. However they believed at the hearing that there is enough to provide 20% of the fuel for the plant as initially conceived.

Right, that’s 20% of 60 tonnes per hour used by the two boilers. But now they plan only one 30 tonne per hour boiler, so the available wood could supply 40% of the heat, right? Well, they don’t seem to have thought of that. They are still saying 20% of just the one boiler. Half the wood that they thought was available has dematerialised, just like the cows.

Then there is the “up to”. They have admitted that “up to 20%” could mean zero, at least some of the time. Coal is still their preferred fuel but they are making an effort for PR reasons. They have been pretty clear that price is their guide. The mix of wood and coal will change from day to day depending on cost and availability.

So there is no commitment to wood at all, except when it might suit them. But to achieve this PR stunt they have to build a less than optimum boiler. Our expert on wood combustion told the hearing that you can design a boiler to work well on any fuel, including a mix of coal and wood, as long as that mix is consistent. If you change the mix the boiler is designed for, it will not work efficiently or cleanly. This seems to be what Fonterra intends.

Fonterra even argued that its planned boiler and “up to” 20 percent biomass was part of “transitioning out of coal.” Well, you don’t transition out of coal by building a brand new coal-fired plant.

Let us set out again what a transition strategy would really look like:

1. Accept that farmers are discovering that intensification has not been profitable, especially at low prices, and are culling cows; stop all plans to expand milk drying, focussing instead on adding more value to the milk they do have.
2. Start replacing smaller, old boilers (they have several that date from the 1970s and 80s in the 10MW range) with 100% high efficiency dedicated wood boilers.
3. As they gain experience and build their supply chain, gradually replace larger ones with 100% wood (or the new electric technologies which are looming) as they need major repairs or maintenance.
4. Forget the idea they may be considering that moving to gas will get us off their back. Gas is a fossil fuel with carbon emissions about 40% less than coal at the point of combustion, but methane releases from gas production have increased since fracking became common and can even undo this advantage. Forget it, and go clean.

Federated Farmers’ response to Fonterra’s plans, even with one boiler, was perfect, with Federated Farmers dairy chairman Andrew Hoggard telling the Timaru Herald that it was like “the Death Star of the milk power industry”.

We couldn’t have put it better ourselves.

The post Would that Fonterra Would Use Wood! appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

http://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/opinion/380579/fonterra-has-no-future-do-we

The post A Trip Down The Rabbit Hole: Rosemary Penwarden Reports From The Fonterra Studholme Expansion Resource Consent Hearing appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

An unambiguous message outside the massive Fonterra plant in the small Southland town of Edendale. Great work by Coal Action Murihiku.

On Monday 4 April, as Fonterra launched its bid for resource consent for a massive coal-fired expansion of its Studholme plant in South Canterbury, which if consented and built further worsening greenhouse gas emissions at a critical time for the climate, ordinary New Zealanders up and down the nation took action in their local community. There were many voices, but one message: Fonterra, quit coal.

Fonterra responded with greenwash, claiming that they were on our side, and that their new Studholme boilers would, if built, use 20% biomass. But in fact their resource consent application documents say the boilers would use up to 20% biomass, and admit that “up to 20%” is mostly likely to mean “0%”.

It’s time to stop the spin, Fonterra. Actions speak a whole lot louder than words. You must take real, measurable, progressive steps to get off coal and onto renewable sources of energy.

Outside a Fonterra distribution plant in Christchurch

Outside Fonterra’s Brightwater factory near Nelson

Auckland Coal Action sends the message loud and clear

Outside Fonterra’s flash HQ

Poster placed in an Auckland window

The post From Edendale to Auckland, They Came With One Message: Fonterra, Quit Coal appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

2777 people signed our open letter with Action Station asking Fonterra to pledge “no new coal boilers” and progressively switch their old coal boilers to wood. But Fonterra are refusing to listen, and they are pressing ahead with plans to build two new coal-fired boilers as part of their Studholme plant expansion in South Canterbury.

Fonterra have said that up to 20% of biomass could be used in their new boilers, meaning at least 80% of the fuel would be coal – but their resource consent application makes it clear that coal is their preferred option.

Waimate locals and Coal Action Network activists make their statement in front of Fonterra’s Studholme plant

Fonterra love to trade on New Zealand’s “clean and green” image. They don’t want the world to know that their coal use has increased 38% since 2008. Yet rather than do something real about the problem by using wood waste instead of coal to fuel their new boilers, they prefer to bully their way through and hope no-one will notice.

But Fonterra needs resource consent for the planned expansion of its Studholme plant – and because that resource consent application has been publicly notified, you get the chance to tell Fonterra that in 2015, increasing our dependence on coal and our greenhouse gas emissions just isn’t on.

Please download and read our Quick Submission Guide (Word | PDF) and then submit now against Fonterra’s planned coal-fired Studholme expansion.  (Note: All 8 of the resource consent applications listed on this form relate to the Studholme expansion, so it’s simplest to choose all of them.)

Submissions close at 5pm on Friday 27 November – but why wait? Get your submission in today! And if you have any questions about the submissions process, please contact us on coalactionnetwork@gmail.com.

The post Submit Now On Fonterra’s Proposed Coal-Fired Studholme Dairy Factory Expansion appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.