The reason CANA, OraTaiao and also 350 Aotearoa were putting pressure on the Ministry was to persuade it not to choose coal for heating Christchurch Hospital. Coal was the cheapest option, but also the most polluting – not only in terms of local pollution, but in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. But coal is only cheap because coal miners and users don’t have to pay for the pollution they cause.

The  leaflet was addressed to Ministry of Health staff – most of whom were happy to receive it – and it called on them to encourage their bosses to decide to use wood waste, not coal, to fuel the planned new Christchurch Hospital boilers. We said:

It seems to us particularly strange that a government department charged with promoting and protecting public health would use a fuel known to damage public health, in contravention of the Ottawa charter which requires health authorities to put health first in all decisions; and of Section 22 of the Health and Disabilities Act 2000, which requires DHBs to exhibit a sense of social and environmental responsibility and to uphold expected ethical and quality standards.

We have been working on this issue for a while now.  In 2016, after visiting Burwood Hospital’s fabulous new biomass boiler system, CANA’s Jeanette Fitzsimons published an article in The Press in Christchurch about the hospital’s plan to continue with coal. “There is still time to see sense” she said.

Last year, Christchurch rekindled its district energy scheme for the city, led by Roger Sutton.  However, Christchurch Hospital departed the scheme, saying it was too expensive, and opted instead to burn coal, prompting Mayor Leanne Dalziell to say she was “heartbroken” at the decision. 

We have all chipped away at this issue, and it looks like the campaign has finally worked.

Christchurch Hospital has now published its call for bids for a new biomass (such a wood waste) plant rather than coal to fuel the new hospital boilers.

The bid for the new biomass boiler house.

Given the risks that burning coal poses to public health, why did it take a whole lot of letter-writing, lobbying and standing in the rain to persuade the Ministry that these boilers shouldn’t run on coal?

The problem was partly mindset, and partly money. Public servants are ultimately responsible to the Government of the day, and the previous National-led Government’s record shows that it didn’t give two hoots about pollution, the environment or climate change – it just wanted to squeeze public expenditure as far as possible.

In turn, that cost-cutting mentality – the same mentality that has led to the disastrous state of Middlemore Hospital – led health bodies to choose coal or gas, rather than carbon-neutral renewable sources, to fuel their boilers.

While one-off decisions like this can go a long way, we need a high price on carbon to ensure that coal is not only the dirty choice but also the expensive choice when all such decisions are being made.  Signs are looking good for the new Dunedin Hospital, where the the new site has now been chosen. Chair of the committee in charge of the rebuild, Pete Hodgson, has made some encouraging noises about moving away from coal, telling the ODT:

”The opportunity exists to switch to renewables, perhaps wood chips, and it is almost certain that the new hospital will therefore be heated with renewable energy…. but we can already be pretty sure that the new hospital will not be using fossil fuels as a heating source.”

Though the company was good, that July morning in Molesworth St was cold, wet and unpleasant. But by helping to create enough pressure to ensure that the wrong decision couldn’t be made under the previous Government, CANA and its allies have created the conditions to ensure the right decision would be made under this Government. Let’s hope there’s more of them.

The post Good News For Your Health, Bad News For The Coal Industry: Christchurch Hospital Decides To Use Biomass For Heat appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

Last November Fonterra reported that they will “only use coal as a last resort, with a target of no new coal boilers installed from 2030”. So what the second largest coal user in NZ is saying is they will carry on building new coal boilers for another 12 years!!

That weak attempt at pulling the wool over our eyes doesn’t go nearly far enough in acknowledging the enormous impact intensified dairying has on the climate. Each of those new boilers will have a design life of 40 years. Fonterra plans to be still burning coal in 2060.

The simple fact is, Fonterra doesn’t want to face facts.  There are too many cows right now. Too much poo in rivers. Too much coal being burned. Too much methane, too much nitrous oxide. The dairy industry is important to NZ, but it has far exceeded its environmental limits.

Environmental damage is not the only ill-effect of the cancerous lust for growth.  The contagious disease Mycoplasma bovis has infected herds suffering from overcrowding and stress.  And financially, the CEO and other Fonterra top managers are doing very well, but ordinary farmers face an increasingly uncertain future.  In the last 30 odd years, the number of herds or farmers have decreased by 28 per cent and the size of each herd has increased 200 per cent.  “It’s the same trend we see in so much of the world, wealth is becoming more concentrated“,  says Glen Herud, founder of Happy Cow Milk, an alternative dairy model.

Two thirds of New Zealand’s agricultural emissions come from methane, 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide, but shorter lived. Steve Cranston wrote in the New Zealand Farmer: “Over 35 per cent of New Zealand’s gross emissions is methane that is belched from cows and sheep – this methane only survives around 12 years in the atmosphere on average.”

This is dangerously false information, as confirmed by climate scientist James Renwick when we checked with him. He advised that while it isn’t a simple calculation, the average lifetime is  more like 30 years and then some of it decays into carbon dioxide with a lifetime of thousands of years.

The remaining third of agricultural emissions are from nitrous oxide, 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide and also extremely long lived. The single largest source is animal excreta deposited during grazing, compounded by poorly managed and drained wet soils.  In most countries nitrous oxide emissions may contribute less than 10% of the CO2  equivalent GHG emissions.  But here this gas contributes 17% of our total GHG emissions because of the dominance of the agricultural sector.

For a responsible and forward-looking farmer perspective, see the recent article by Steve Carden, CEO of NZ’s largest pastoral farm, LandCorp. Let’s hope other farmers read it too. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11979649

It is time agriculture joined the carbon pricing system, phasing in to full responsibility over a few years, and none of this nonsense of getting 95% of their emissions for free which is now planned.

Fonterra could help its image and its public acceptability – not to mention the climate – by starting to phase out fossil fuels in its milk drying plants.

The post Is Fonterra Really Changing? We Don’t Think So. 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.

Climate and health conscious people around the country and particularly in Canterbury have been vocal about the insanity of this and now there is a glimmer of hope. The tender documents were withdrawn last year and have been reissued. The wording is such that it could be possible to avoid coal.

Jeanette Fitzsimons gives the background and explores the arguments in The Press last week: http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/77738911/why-a-hospital-should-not-be-burning-coal

The post A Tale Of Two Hospitals appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

Selva J. Calvo stands up to Fonterra in Whangarei

• Now you can use Action Station’s streamlined submission form to tell Environment Canterbury not to let Fonterra build two dirty new coal-fired boilers at its Studholme plant!

This is Selva. Along with nearly 3000 other New Zealanders, she is concerned that while the coal industry is in retreat around the world, here in New Zealand Fonterra is rapidly expanding its use of coal and propping up some of the nation’s most destructive coal companies, like Bathurst Resources, by doing so.

So Selva did something. She went to the venue of a Fonterra shareholders’ meeting and made a public stand against Fonterra’s coal-fired expansion plans – plans that, if carried out, will make climate change worse and more destructive.

We salute Selva and others who took a stand against Fonterra at their nationwide series of shareholders’ meetings last week. But you can take a stand against Fonterra too – and you don’t have to get out in public to do so.

All you have to do is tell Environment Canterbury you don’t want Fonterra to build two dirty new coal boilers at its Studholme plant in South Canterbury, when they could be installing wood-fired boilers instead, using waste wood from forestry operations.

You can make a quick submission using this form. Make sure you say you are opposed to all 8 resource consent applications – they are all part of the same plan.

And if you need more information, check out our Quick Submission Guide (Word |PDF), where you’ll find plenty of great arguments to use.

PS: Submissions close on Friday 27 November at 5pm – don’t wait till it’s too late!

The post One Woman Stood Up To Fonterra. Now You Can Follow Her Example. 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.

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.

Auckland Coal Action handing out leaflets and bags of wood chips

Fonterra was badly embarrassed, and event organisers got the protest moved on – but not before it had made a big media impact. Below you can read posts about the action on Auckland Coal Action’s excellent blog, plus a selection of media coverage. Fonterra’s days of hiding its dirty secret are over. Auckland Coal Action coverage

• Exciting announcement from Fonterra at Field Days
• Fonterra’s coal use under the spotlight at Mystery Creek
• “Your days of burning coal are numbered few”

Selected media coverage

• Radio New Zealand: Climate change protestors kicked out of Fieldays
• Waikato Times/Stuff: ‘Fonterra’ flyers stir the pot at Fieldays
• Newstalk ZB: No letup in Fonterra coal campaign

The post Auckland Coal Action Exposes Fonterra’s Dirty Secret: Coal appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

Fonterra’s subsidiary Glencoal has put its plans for an open cast mine on SH2 at Mangatangi on hold indefinitely. The local community is celebrating. They worked very hard with submissions on all the impacts of coal mining that you are allowed to talk about in consent hearings – water, dust, traffic – but not climate change, the worst impact of all. We hear Fonterra was really surprised at the strength of the opposition.

Much of the credit though must go to Auckland Coal Action which has turned out seven times on the last afternoon of holiday weekends to face traffic crawling back to Auckland from Bay of Plenty and Coromandel, with huge placards saying

“Fonterra plans coal mine here”

“Coal Cooks the Climate”

“Fonterra could use Waste Wood”

The mine was planned for such a public site, adjoining SH2 and the protests got some publicity, as did CANA’s opposition at the consents hearing. We brought expert evidence (PDF) to show wood chip from forestry residues was available and technically feasible as a boiler fuel with no net carbon emissions. This is what a win looks like. But….

Solid Energy has just reopened Kopako 1, an old mine around 5km away which still contains a lot of coal, on a back road hardly anyone ever a uses except for mining. It’s part of the same Maramarua coal field. They have a contract with Fonterra to supply more than 100,000 tonnes a year for their Waikato milk drying plants. Fonterra has just sneaked round the corner and passed responsibility for the mining to Solid Energy.

From the perspective of the atmosphere, nothing has changed. Emissions will continue as planned. But we have shown that Fonterra is susceptible to pressure. All those motorists tooting support for the ACA protests has got to them. They have had to sneak away to a less public site. But it’s not that easy.

Now is the time to keep up the pressure. Fonterra is the third largest coal user in the country by far. With the Huntly power station phasing out they may already be the second largest, after the steel mill. At least 400,000 tonnes a year – we are still working out just how much more than that. This is not compatible with the “clean green image” they like to use to sell their milk overseas.

There is a big opportunity here for Fonterra to position themselves as working towards sustainability by transitioning to wood waste. In fact they told us they were doing that, but are dragging the chain. We intend to keep the pressure on to help them recognise their own self-interest.

The post Fonterra Sneaks Round The Corner appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

Today there was no elephant, despite the need for two. It just shows how hard it is for unpaid voluntary activists to be there all the time at a hearing like this – an hour’s drive from where most anti-coal people live, during working hours. No-one was available today to be the elephant. Most were preparing to give their submissions.

It was also child care time. Our own Marisa, pregnant with her twins, had her pre-school son there and was diverting him with his own video screen and an apple and frequent trips outside, at the same time as trying to record our submitters and witnesses.

(Here’s a request from Marisa: If you’re on Facebook, please Like the climate elephant!)

Fonterra’s lawyers had no such constraints – on well paid time, transport and meals funded, children, if they have any, being cared for elsewhere. Such is the unequal battle for the environment.

Some interesting issues that arose include: can a financial agreement with an affected person absolve the firm from meeting standards for dust pollution at that person’s home? What about if they sell it? What about people who visit? that issue is flagged to come back on the table for discussion.

There is no baseline data for the state of the environment before the coal mine. They propose to monitor levels of dust and noise but how can we know what is caused by the mine if there is no date from before? They propose to monitor for a month before, to establish such data. This is a nonsense. We need at least a couple of years’ data to see what happens in every weather and season.

All this of course would be unnecessary if we looked a little wider and adopted a renewable fuel technology that leaves the coal in the hole and uses a fuel that is renewable and clean and currently being wasted. That is the substance of CANA’s submission today. The first part is just legal argument that our concerns are relevant. the second part outlines an alternative scenario to avoid the mine.

Our witness John Gifford gave it weight with his experience and knowledge:

• CANA oral submission (PDF)
• John Gifford oral presentation (PDF)

We were not prevented from presenting this, but the chair has said he thinks it is not relevant and will give it little or no weight. The legal argument is designed to make him think again about this.

The hearing adjourned at lunchtime and reconvenes again tomorrow at 9am

The post The Unequal Battle for the Environment: Update On Mangatawhiri Hearings, 3 September appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.