Instead, residential consumers have been forced to subsidise commercial and industrial customers who have the financial, analytical and legal resources to pressure the electricity sector to keep their prices down.

On the supply side, the sector’s profits have increased substantially, largely due to their ability to manipulate the “marginal cost” pricing system – see the graph below:

In effect, New Zealanders have swapped a low cost, public-service electricity system for a wide “choice” of high-cost suppliers, each of whom seeks to maximise shareholder profits by manipulating the market at our – and the environment’s – expense. Here’s just one example.

Victoria University economist Dr. Geoff Bertram has written about this previously here and here, and, now retired, recently gave a highly informative slide presentation to the group Engineers for Social Responsibility.

Dr. Bertram explains how the Tiwai smelter and Huntly power station are used to keep power prices high, and concludes with ways to reform the electricity sector to create a fairer, more equitable market for this essential commodity.

A Youtube video of his talk, including questions at the end, can be found here.

NB: For those new to the topic, here’s a useful overview of the history and structure of New Zealand’s electricity sector.

The post The Great New Zealand Electricity Scam appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

On Sunday the CANA organising group, along with many other wonderful people, had a great day protesting a coal mine near Huntly.

The protest across the two main gates of the Kopako1 mine at Maramarua

Firstly: What is this coal mine?

It is a recently reopened mine, with the purpose of getting coal for Fonterra to evaporate milk to send to China and pretend its better for Chinese babies than breast milk. While Fonterra recently has been applauded for not renewing their permit for the Mangatangi coal mine, they have instead just restarted this less visible one. Sneaky sneaky!

Secondly: Why Sunday?

The New Zealand and Australia Minerals conference was being held in Tauranga this week, and the weekend included some optional field trips to visit the surrounding gold and coal mines. Conferences, as we all know, are best spent eating lots of free food and trying to meet influential people in your field so you can name drop them on later occasions. These conference-goers spent their weekend looking at blights they’ve made on lovely landscapes and getting yelled at about it at every single one they tried to go to.

Thirdly: What happened?

The CANA team spent a pleasant morning eating scones at a lovely nearby cafe, waiting for the call to head out. Once it came we raced off to the mine, and, along with others from Auckland Coal Action, Peace Action and 350.org, set ourselves up with a multitude of banners.

The conference-goers arrived shortly after, drove up to the gate, stopped for a while to figure out what to do, then turned around. There was another entry!

CANA’s Mel (in the flowery hat) and other protestors at the second sneaky gate as a Bathurst employee tries to unlock it.

We followed them over and, while they were doing whatever they were doing in the coal mine, spent a pleasant afternoon chanting at them through megaphones. One couple with a camper van had ingeniously rigged it up as a giant speaker, which echoed all down the valley (the residents of the house they parked in the driveway of were reportedly quite excited at the goings-on in their quiet rural road). Interspersed with the eloquent heartfelt speeches of the protesters, there boomed out vivid pre-recordings of an angry mob and a siren followed by a brilliantly serious “evacuate…evacuate…this is a climate emergency.”

When eventually the coal viewers tried to leave, they came driving out in their mostly single occupancy cars like good little fossil fuel proponents.

They moved very slowly due to the enthusiastic blockades by protesters further up the road, so I got chatting to the last guy out who was quick to make clear that he was “just there to have a look” and didn’t disagree with what we were saying. He reportedly was very into tree planting and ocean cleanups. His eagerness to not be associated with being ‘one of them,’ (and the very miserable faces of the rest), pleased me enormously.

Perhaps, at last, fossil fuels are negatively received.

Perhaps at last the winds are changing, after the recent reports of just how long Mobil and Shell knew about climate change; with wider public realisation of the lies they paid for; of fossil fuel companies’ intensive lobbying to governments to perpetuate a reliance on them.

Perhaps, at last, fossil fuels are losing their social license.

Fourthly: And then what happened?

The coal people left and we regrouped to have a spontaneous picnic. The police arrived and wandered over, saying (with no hint of believing it for a moment) they’d received reports of protesters throwing rocks. We offered them some cake and a hard-boiled egg, which they politely declined and went away and loitered in the corner while we finished making new friends and swapping cakes, and then we all drove off home after a very enjoyable protest.

The post The Kopako1 Protest: A View from the Inside appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

Protesters today greeted mining conference delegates on their field trip to the North Island’s largest coal mine near Huntly calling for New Zealand to rapidly phase out the use of coal to help stop climate change.

The 15 protesters – from Auckland Coal Action, Coal Action Network Aotearoa and other groups, held anti-coal banners and signs, as around 30 mining industry executives arrived at the mine at 10 am this morning.

coal activists at Rotowaro mine 2

The delegates from the AusIMM mining conference, which begins tomorrow in Tauranga, have spent the weekend on field trips to mine sites, being dogged by protesters at every stop. Yesterday, six activists were arrested in the Karangahake Gorge.

The Rotowaro coa mine, near Huntly, is jointly owned by BT Mining (Bathurst Resources Ltd and Talley’s Energy), and supplies the Huntly Power Station, New Zealand Steel and other customers. Other mines in the area supply Fonterra.

“The need to rapidly phase out coal use to protect the environment has now become extremely clear, and is an essential step to meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels,” said Auckland Coal Action spokesperson, Peter Whitmore.

“New Zealand has an abundance of wind and sun energy that can be captured. With today’s technologies and the advent of wall batteries, more insulation and energy efficiency, coupled with our hydropower, we should be turning away from coal, not digging more of it up – and we should be shutting down Huntly this year, as originally planned.”

Just down the road from the Rotowaro mine is the Kopako1 mine, also owned by BT mining, which supplies coal to Fonterra’s three big coal-fired boilers in the Waikato. The mining delegates will head to the Kopako 1 mine after Rotowaro where they will be greeted by more protestors. 

Fonterra is New Zealand’s second-largest user of coal after NZ Steel.  Kopako1 was re-opened in 2015, after local protests stopped Fonterra from starting its own coal mine at Mangatawhiri.

“Coal mines right around the country are being re-opened or extended because of dairy expansion,” saidCoal Action Network Aotearoa’s Jeanette Fitzsimons. “It feels like we are going backwards on coal, which simply has no role if we want to address climate change.  Our model of industrial farming is unsustainable.”

Both groups called on the Government to put a hefty enough price on coal so as to create a disincentive to use coal, which was still too cheap as the costs of its impacts – from health effects to climate change – are not factored into its price.

A few days ago, UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres said in a key speech, “If we do not change course by 2020, we risk missing the point where we can avoid runaway climate change, with disastrous consequences for people and all the natural systems that sustain us… We need to put the brake on deadly greenhouse gas emissions and drive climate action. We need to rapidly shift away from our dependence on fossil fuels. We need to replace them with clean energy from water, wind and sun.”

“We need to listen to Guterres, and the many others who have given this message,” says Whitmore, and start taking immediate and effective action.”

The post Protesters greet mining conference field trip, demanding rapid phase-out of coal appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

This highlights the company’s contribution to climate change and to New Zealand’s total emissions. And it’s why it’s time to Tell Fonterra: No New Coal.

Fonterra does not divulge its total coal burn, but this table, compiled by CANA from various mainly public sources, shows it is well over half a million tonnes a year and growing rapidly.

Even without the proposed huge new coal fired milk drier at Studholme, for which Fonterra  has just applied for consents, it uses more coal than the Huntly power station. With the new plant it would use more than 600,000 tonnes.

The Huntly coal-fired power station has the capacity to generate 480 MW of heat, compared with Fonterra’s combined generating capacity of 572.9 MW.

The largest coal user in New Zealand is the Glenbrook steel mill. The Huntly power station was second, but has now been overtaken by Fonterra.

“Fonterra’s use of coal, and its planned expansion, is simply unsustainable,” said CANA spokesperson Jeanette Fitzsimons. “The world is in transition away from coal as climate change starts to bite everywhere and the science tells us we must phase out fossil fuels by 2050. Fonterra is going rapidly in the other direction”.

These huge quantities of coal are used to generate heat to dry milk to milk powder, a low value commodity which is Fonterra’s main export.

The company has a number of alternatives. Wood-fired boilers are common in Europe, and New Zealand has large quantities of waste wood from forestry operations. There are wood fuel suppliers who collect and process this wood and deliver to boiler sites.

“Another smart strategy would be to invest in adding more value to less milk, with less coal burn and fewer cows generating more wealth for Fonterra, farmers and the country,” said Ms Fitzsimons.

As the world demands action on climate change and a shift to cleaner fuels, the risk to Fonterra’s brand in discerning markets like Europe will become a serious consideration.

While the world is working to move away from coal, the Government has done nothing to deter Fonterra’s use of the climate-changing fuel, testament to the fact that we have one of the weakest climate policies on the planet.

CANA is a volunteer group of citizens working to reduce the mining and burning of coal by opposing new and expanded mines and plans to burn more coal, while protecting the jobs that already exist.

• Table and further details showing Fonterra’s coal use

The post Fonterra Uses More Coal Than Huntly Coal-Fired Power Station appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.