This week the government gave the thumbs up for Fonterra to keep burning coal for another 15 years, and for NZ Steel to continue burning it past 2050.

Our biggest polluters are still calling the shots on coal.

Wait. Isn’t it the government’s job to set policy for industry to follow, not the other way around?
Yes. Yet this week, as it released the Emissions Reduction Plan (ERP), there was an opportunity for the government to take meaningful steps toward reducing our reliance on coal.  But it didn’t.

We want to give big ups to those ministry folk who put the 343 page document together. All those words sound encouraging, but they don’t distract us from the reality that our civilisation and all that we hold dear on this planet are at enormous risk from global heating and this document is the government’s first response.

Urgent transformative change is needed. We can’t find that in the ERP.

We can’t even find the word “cow”, not even once. Where is the plan to deal with Fonterra, our biggest polluter? Where is the plan to radically transform agriculture, the cause of half of our entire emissions? Too many cows in inappropriate places like the stony Canterbury Plains have decimated Canterbury’s braided rivers, poisoned the native freshwater creatures, polluted aquifers and put human health at risk.

All of that is absent.

Cut the number of cows and you’ve gone a long way to solving the coal problem too, since 95% of the milk produced in NZ is dried, largely with coal, and exported, mainly by Fonterra. Then Bathurst can get on with moving their workers to meaningful jobs to build, not destroy, a low carbon economy.

But no, Bathurst is planning a new coal mine down south and their biggest customer Fonterra is ready-and-waiting. So much for letting the industry voluntarily phase out of coal. Strong government direction is needed – and that’s missing in the ERP.

Bathurst Resources Ltd (BRL) doesn’t have much of a track record. John Key was present to open its office in Wellington in 2012 – along with hundreds of protestors against its plans to mine the Denniston Plateau. But it’s not even a New Zealand company, after delisting from the NZ stock exchange three years after opening here, supposedly due to the dismally low share price.

Bathurst had to apply to the Overseas Investment Office to expand its Canterbury Coal Mine. The OIO gave it that green light, despite the fact it had breached a raft of consents by already expanding into unconsented territory. That closed last year after a dispute with ECAN over the consents that would have seen protracted legal processes Bathurst clearly couldn’t afford.

An Extinction Rebellion blockade highlighted that it had extracted five times more coal than its consent allowed.

Don’t expect this company to do the right thing for the planet.

As for the farmers, they’re on the front line, acutely affected by the changing climate. Farmers in the Waikato have been suffering from a severe drought – a longer drought than normal, they say. Normally the rain has come in by now, but not this year, one of the hottest and driest summers on record, caused at least in part by climate change.

Those farmers are now getting a handout from the government to support them through this difficult period. Support is needed – most importantly to transition away from the carbon-intensive system that is making the tough times more frequent.

The last thing farmers need is their industry’s refusal to change. But thanks to massive lobbying from the agriculture sector farmers are still excluded from the Emissions Trading Scheme and so have not paid a cent towards the ERP.  No Matter! On the very day the government lets them off the hook for paying the cost of their pollution, it was announced the taxpayer would be footing the bill to help them deal with the impact of climate change. You can’t make this stuff up.

NZ Steel

In another nod to industry the ERP allows NZ Steel to keep burning coal up to 2050 – this despite the push elsewhere towards low carbon steel manufacture and NZ Steel referring to steel-without-coal a “holy grail still at least a decade away”. One decade = 2032, not 2050.

Here are three points about steel:

1. You can make steel without coal, you just need the political will. Sweden’s Hybrit, with help from the EU Innovation Fund, will have commercially available coal-free steel by 2026. Sweden’s high percentage of hydroelectricity makes it a sitter for this kind of innovation – sound familiar? Even NZ Steel’s parent company Bluescope is working on low carbon steel manufacture in Port Kembla, Australia. It’s high time coal industry lobbyists stop denying the obvious (no, the world does not need your West Coast coking coal!) and get on with helping coal workers into much needed jobs to help secure all our futures.
2. The cool thing about steel is its 100% recyclability. We do OK in Aotearoa, recycling around 80% of our steel even though it has to be shipped overseas, but there is so much more that we can do in the recycling department. However, as with so many other manufacturing industries here, government must learn from the industry experts in order to make useful policy choices. For example, due to all sorts of technical reasons including the unique way NZ steel is made using thermal rather than coking coal, it currently makes sense to recycle But with low emissions inserted into company’s bottom line in place of profit we have a new, exciting story to tell. Yes please!
3. Stop using so much steel in construction. It’s been called “the concrete of the future” – Cross laminated Timber (CLT), developed at Canterbury University, is cost competitive to concrete and steel in low rise buildings (up to six stories) . One cubic meter of CLT can absorb one tonne of CO2. What’s stopping us?

Genesis Energy

Genesis is our other biggest coal user. It’s embarrassing that Genesis Energy still uses coal. CANA shamed them into stopping importing Indonesian coal 2014 when coal workers were being laid off down the road at Rotowaro.  Yet today Genesis, a 51% government owned company, is importing record amounts of coal.

We won’t go into the tangled mess behind what is now an electricity system that makes enormous profit off the backs of our forefathers’ publicly built electricity network. But Huntly coal has to go. My friend, currently working on huge wind and solar projects in Australia said our electricity system would be so easy to fix – he means make entirely renewable. In his view we don’t need Lake Onslow. Replace Huntly coal with planned, managed, distributed electricity. However, it looks as though the neoliberal capitalist model is sacrosanct. The market rules. But if we’re serious about the climate emergency a coherent public electricity utility has to be our priority.

Summing Up

A 2037 date to end coal in NZ is not fast enough. It ensures our biggest polluters get to continue dumping millions more tonnes of coal into a choking atmosphere than their fair share. CANA’s proposed date of 2027 to end coal use, instead of the government’s 2037, gives industry plenty of time to ensure that all workers involved in the mining and transport of coal get the training and support to transition into jobs needed for adapting to a climate changed economy – and there are plenty.

CANA’s 2014-15 report Jobs After Coal notes that Coal miners’ transferable skills are essential for helping build the economy we desperately need if we are to survive – like fixing our low lying railway network, building flood defences where possible in our low lying coastal cities, reorganising the way we grow food and so many other areas.

We would love to bring you good news folks! Well, climate change bumped Ukraine off top place in the news last week.

TBH, while the government gives the thumbs up to Fonterra in the ERP we have to give the ERP a great big thumbs down.

Our thumbs up goes to the climate activists who shut down Bathurst’s Takitimu coal mine recently, injecting colour and creativity into the heart of Mordor for an entire day.

Cheers!

Rosemary and the CANA team

The post Our biggest polluters are still calling the shots on coal appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

WELLINGTON PROTEST: Midland Park, outside Fonterra’s office at 157 Lambton Quay, at 1 pm on Friday 28 May.

New Zealand’s largest company, Fonterra, is the major culprit in New Zealand’s most critical environmental and climate problems.

Fonterra, and its farmers, profit from dumping their pollution and waste, for free, into our atmosphere, water and soil.

This is the cause of worsening climate change, unswimmable rivers and undrinkable waters, along with poor animal welfare, tropical deforestation, loss of amenity and biodiversity, and health risks to Kiwis, from premature and breastfeeding infants, to adults risking gastrointestinal illness, including colorectal cancer.

Put simply, Fonterra is at the centre of a web of destruction caused by too many cows, in the wrong places.

Between 1990 and 2019, dairy cattle numbers increased by 82% nationally, from 3.4 million to 6.3 million. Dairy cattle increased almost tenfold in Canterbury (from 113,000 to 1.2 million).

The thin, dry and stony soils of Canterbury, the Mackenzie Basin and Otago are totally unsuitable for intensive dairying, which exists  only through unsustainable inputs of irrigation water, synthetic nitrogen fertilisers and imported feed such as palm kernel.

Photo: Duncan Brown

Intensive dairying also produces copious quantities of two dangerous climate-changing gases, methane and nitrous oxide, in addition to the carbon dioxide produced by Fonterra’s powdered milk factories, which burn about 500,000 tonnes of coal every year.

The waste water from those factories is dumped onto neighbouring, cow-free, “ghost farms”, and is so polluting that farmers and their neighbours dare not drink from their wells, nor eat from their veggie gardens.

New Zealand’s animal overstocking is so bad, that New Zealand risks having trade barriers imposed on us by more environmentally-aware countries, especially since agriculture remains outside the Emissions Trading Scheme.

Fonterra’s toxic rip-off of New Zealand’s environment and people must stop!

We call on Fonterra and its farmer owners to reduce cow numbers by 50% nationwide, and reduce them to 1990 levels in the worst-affected regions of Canterbury, the Mackenzie Basin and Otago.

We also call on Fonterra to stop burning coal by 2027, not a decade later as it currently proposes.

AUCKLAND PROTEST: Victoria Park, cnr Halsey & Fanshawe St, opposite Fonterra HQ at 109 Fanshawe St, at 3 pm on Friday 28 May.

WELLINGTON PROTEST: Midland Park, outside Fonterra’s office at 157 Lambton Quay, at 1 pm on Friday 28 May.

To join the nationwide protest movement, contact your local elected officials, newspapers and trade unions; post on social media and support groups such as:

Coal Action Network Aotearoa (CANA):  www.coalaction.org.nz

Aotearoa Water Action (AWA): www.aotearoawateraction.org.nz

Extinction Rebellion (XR):  extinctionrebellion.nz/christchurch/water-campaign/

The post Protest Fonterra, New Zealand’s Worst Polluter, this Friday, 28th May 2021 appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

“This could spell the end of cheap coal for Fonterra’s Canterbury operations, and should give the company an opportunity to make the switch away from coal, the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel,” said Cindy Baxter, a CANA spokesperson.

Fonterra’s Darfield dairy factory has two large, relatively new coal boilers, totalling 75MW, and burns around 90,000 tonnes of coal a year to dry milk powder for export. Last year Coal Action Network, alongside Extinction Rebellion Ōtautahi, blocked the mine to protest the expansion.

CANA and XR Ōtautahi blockade at Bathurst Canterbury Coal mine blockade, September 2020.

“Against the background of the Climate Change Commission recommending the dairy industry gets out of coal by 2037, the closure of this mine provides yet another incentive for Fonterra to dump coal, and make the switch to biomass, but of course the impact on climate change should be incentive enough,” said Baxter.

Bathurst Resources was in the middle of an application to extend the mine, but the application process had reached a sticking point.  It was being extraordinarily recalcitrant with Environment Canterbury over its refusal to accept that it was mining far more coal than it had consent for.  Over the past five years it had been fined for 28 breaches involving runoff into the local stream, threatening the habitat of the endangered Canterbury mudfish.

A Selwyn District Council report showed It had also committed numerous breaches of noise, truck movements, lights at night, dust and mining of more coal than it was allowed. Bathurst disputed this, and was also refusing to provide information to the councils as part of its application.

“One wonders whether the negotiations with ECAN over these breaches and the cost of compliance made the coal too expensive to mine,” said Baxter.

The Overseas Investment Office gave the green light for this Australian company to purchase land for its mine extension, something it should never have done in light of the illegality of its operations there.

“At the end of the day, an end to this coal mine could serve to drive up the price of thermal coal in Aotearoa and, in climate change terms, every closed coal mine is a good coal mine.  Now, we look to Fonterra to dump coal altogether, and make the switch.”

The post Bathurst to close Canterbury Coal Mine: all eyes now on Fonterra appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

Land Protectors Stop Coal in its Tracks 

Press release from: 
Coal Action Network Aotearoa, Environmental Justice Ōtepoti and Extinction Rebellion Ōtepot/Ōtautahi/Invercargill

 At 7.30 am this morning “land protectors” disrupted & locked themselves to the railway tracks outside the Dunedin Railway station to stop the daily coal train running from Bathurst Resources’ Takitimu mine in Southland to Fonterra’s Clandeboye milk factory in Temuka.

Upwards of ten people are currently locked to the tracks, blocking the train, while others carry flags and banners, and others are on drums.

Today’s action is very personal for Environmental Justice Ōtepoti member Fiona Clements (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Waitaha, Clan Gordon) whose whakapapa are to the Takitimu Mountains overlooking Bathurst’s coal mine.

“Ko Takitimu te Mauka, Ko Takitimu te Waka, My whakapapa is on the line, being carted off like carbonised bones, no longer of flesh but stone. This happens on a daily basis past my own home transporting the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel. This undermines Mana whenua and our place here as kaitiaki of Papatūānuku”.

“Takitimu is the waka that brought my tīpuna from Hawaiki, it was turned to stone at Murihiku and now Bathurst desecrates this Whenua daily by carving it out & burning coal in Fonterra’s factories.” Says Clements.

“Fonterra purchases the majority of its’ coal from Bathurst Resources to dry milk powder for export. Fonterra is driving the demand for further coal expansion, desecrating the Whenua. Bathurst’s plan to expand the Southland Takitimu mine for another 30 years, demonstrates Fonterra are deceiving & delaying their supposed plan to phase out coal. If it wasn’t for Fonterra, Bathurst Coal Mines could shut down forever,”  said Coal Action Network’s Michael Dumbar,  a Southland farmer.

Scientists state coal must be phased out worldwide by 2030 in order to keep warming to the agreed Paris Agreement’s warming limit of 1.5 degrees C.

“Last year our Dunedin City Council declared a climate emergency and aims to be net zero emissions by 2030. The emissions from the coal on this train is the same as putting 2,500 extra cars on the road every single day. Bathurst and Fonterra’s coal train makes a mockery of what our city is trying to achieve,” s aid CANA’s Rosemary Penwarden.

“I’m simply doing what my conscience demands” said 79 year old Michael Fay, currently sitting in front of the train on the tracks.

“I’m here for these young people right here on the track beside me. It is morally unacceptable to do nothing while their future is flushed down this very [railway] line.”

The group, a coalition of climate activists have these three demands:

We say to the State, Fonterra & Bathurst Resources that they must be honourable treaty partners & honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi by:
1) Stopping expansion & protecting Te Whenua from further desecration
2) Implementing a just transition from extractive industry by centring mātauranga māori and supporting Tauiwi & Tangata Whenua to thrivewith Papatūānuku.
3) To the Government: You have declared a Climate Emergency. Stop subsidising & investing in the fossil fuel extractive industry. STOP COAL IN ITS TRACKS

More photos

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Bathurst Resource’s planned extension of its Canterbury coal mine, shut down by protesters this morning, is proof that dairy companies like Fonterra are not moving out of coal fast enough, says Coal Action Network Aotearoa (CANA).

“We stand in solidarity with the Extinction Rebellion protesters who have blocked the Canterbury Coal mine this morning: Fonterra should be ashamed that its failure to shift off coal is the reason Bathurst wants to expand this mine,” said Cindy Baxter, of CANA.

“The developed world must stop using coal by 2030 if we want to keep global warming to 1.5˚C under the Paris Agreement, and this should include Fonterra and the rest of the dairy industry. Fonterra’s our second-largest user of coal, used to dry milk: we wonder if our export markets are aware of the pollution behind this product.”

“Not only should the mine extension not go ahead, but Environment Canterbury should shut it down altogether due to Bathurst’s ongoing and extensive breaches of its consents, described by a Judge as a “systemic failure to comply” when he fined the company for yet another breach in January this year.

Over the three years from 2017-2020, Bathurst has been fined a total of around $38,000 for allowing runoff to flow into a local stream 28 times, a stream that is home to a nationally threatened species, the Canterbury mudfish.

ECAN was supposed to hear Bathurst’s application, but this has been delayed. The company had repeatedly failed to provide the Selwyn District Council with information it had requested in order to fully assess the impact of the expanded mine footprint.

In 2017, the Selwyn District Council discovered, in response to local complaints around an increase in traffic, dust and vehicle movements, that Bathurst was mining more coal than it had consent for, and requested that the company apply for that consent.  In her report, planning consultant Janette Dovey stated:

“I was engaged to process that on behalf of SDC in late February 2018. During that process, it became evident that the increase in heavy vehicle movements was directly related to the increase in the volume of coal being extracted, and that the increased Mine production was not consented, with additional non-compliances being applicable.”

“Bathurst appears to have recognised its inability to operate safely and legally to the extent that its new application to increase the mine is riddled with ‘retrospective’ applications to bring its previous breaches within the law. The company is making a nonsense of the regulatory process and ECAN should shut it down,” said Baxter.

 “It’s 2020 and it’s time Aotearoa got out of coal: this mine going ahead shows Fonterra is a laggard, despite all the nice words and membership of so-called sustainable industry groups.”

The post Fonterra should be ashamed of causing coal mine expansion: CANA supports activists appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

To begin, here is an overview of local issues from Massey University, including the New Zealand index of Social Deprivation.

It should come as no surprise that the Buller coal-mining region is one of the most deprived in the country.

For the big picture, here is a seminal paper from the US on the overall cost to communities of mining, transporting, and burning coal.

NB: Coal prices have collapsed since this paper was published in 2011.  If the costs outweighed the benefits then, the balance must be far worse today.

Here are some useful links from OraTaiao, the New Zealand Climate and Health Council:

Fossil fuels, Climate Change and Health;

The 2017 Royal Society report Human Health Impacts of Climate Change for NZ has a section on outdoor air quality;

More recently, here is a 2019 Lancet report on climate change and health and a 2019 review of air pollution and health from the American College of Chest Physicians.

For those who want to go deeper, there is a large body of relevant scientific evidence from the Appalachian coalfields in the US, where coal is mined by much the same methods, and in similar terrain, as in the Buller.

The following is a list of publications from one researcher, Dr. Michael Hendryx, Professor of Public Health at Indiana University. The titles show the many ways by which coal mining poisons communities and blights children’s lives.

• Full cost accounting for the life cycle of coal.
• Unintended consequences of the Clean Air Act: Mortality rates in Appalachian mining communities.
• An examination of the effects of mountaintop removal coal mining on respiratory symptoms and COPD using propensity scores.
• Mortality in Appalachian coal-mining regions: The value of statistical life lost.
• Mortality from heart, respiratory and kidney disease in coal mining areas of Appalachia.
• Increased risk of depression linked to mountaintop coal mining.
• Appalachian mountaintop mining particulate matter induces neoplastic transformation of human bronchial epithethial cells and promotes tumor formation.
• Improving the environmental quality component of the county health rankings model.
• Self-reported cancer rates in two rural areas of West Virginia with and without mountaintop mining.
• Health-related quality of life among Central Appalachian residents in mountaintop mining counties.
• Association between mountaintop mining and birth defects among live births in Central Appalachia.
• Atmospheric particulate matter size distribution and concentration in West Virginia coal mining and non-mining areas.
• Childhood asthma in rural-urban areas.
• Chronic cardiovascular disease mortality in mountaintop mining areas of Central Appalachian states.
• Atmospheric particulate matter in proximity to mountaintop coal mines: Sources and potential environmental and human impacts.
• Personal and family health in rural areas of Kentucky with and without mountaintop coal mining.
• Air pollution particulate matter collected from an Appalachian mountaintop mining site induces cardiovascular dysfunction.
• Adult tooth loss for residents of US coal mining and Appalachian counties.
• A comparative analysis of health-related quality of life for US counties with and without coal mining.
• A geographical information system-based analysis of cancer mortality and population exposure to coal mining activities in West Virginia, USA.
• Higher coronary heart disease and heart attack morbidity in Appalachian coal mining regions.
• Ecological integrity of streams related to human cancer mortality rates.
• Lung cancer mortality is elevated in coal-mining areas of Appalachia.
• Relations between health indicators and residential proximity to coal mining in West Virginia.
• Hospitalization patterns associated with Appalachian coal mining.
• Residence in coal-mining areas and low-birth-weight outcomes.
• Mortality rates in Appalachian coal mining counties: 24 years behind the nation.
• Cancer mortality rates in Appalachian mountaintop coal mining areas.
• The public health impacts of surface coal mining.
• Increased risk of depression for people living in coal mining areas of central Appalachia.
• Atmospheric particulate matter in proximity to mountaintop coal mines: sources and potential environmental human health impacts.
• The long-term economic benefits of wind versus mountaintop removal coal on Coal River Mountain, West Virginia.
• Mountaintop mining consequences.
• Learning outcomes among students in relation to West Virginia coal mining: An environmental riskscape approach.
• Association between residence near surface coal mining and blood inflammation.
• Health disparities and environmental competence: A study of Appalachian coal mining.

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Bathurst, based in Wellington, but largely Singaporean-owned,  is the main coal miner supplying New Zealand’s dairy industry, Aotearoa’s second-largest coal user. The industry, dominated by Fonterra, burns coal to dry milk powder for export.  Last year the Overseas Investment Office granted Bathurst permission to buy more land in Canterbury for mining.

Extinction Rebellion Ōtautahi Christchurch protest at ECan offices in early May. Photo: ER Chch.

Bathurst’s current mine at Coalgate (Glentunnel, mid-Canterbury) produces 142,000 tonnes of coal a year, which once consumed adds 406,000 tonnes of CO2 a year into the atmosphere.  The extension, two kilometres away, would extend the life of the mine to 2035 and produce another 30,000 tonnes of coal a year – adding another 87,000 tonnes of CO2 a year to the atmosphere. 

Yet Fonterra has promised it is getting out of coal and working to transition to a new energy future – and the government has bought into this.  

In the leadup to Level 4 lockdown, Bathurst and Fonterra spent two days successfully lobbying the government to make thermal coal for dairy factories an essential use.  

Coal Action Network Aotearoa has had a long history of opposing Bathurst’s coal mining activities. In this blog we set out what is going on in Canterbury, along with other historical background to the company, its precarious finances, and its political relationships.  

Bathurst’s ongoing pollution of local rivers threatens endangered fish 

Right alongside the Coalgate mine is Bush Gully creek, habitat to the critically endangered Canterbury mudfish, which is close to extinction.  The creek runs through the land.

A large part of Bathurst’s application to Environment Canterbury (ECan) for this 18ha expansion of its current coal mine includes retrospective applications to make up for not meeting its consents for its current mining operations,as detailed in their resource consent applications, which are available via the ECan website. 

Bathurst is applying for retrospective consent on a range of issues, including its original consent for water use, which it has consistently exceeded, and for damage to the Tara Wetlands which it has damaged extensively, and is applying to continue doing so.  It has also breached consent on traffic movement, running more trucks up and down the road than it had consented – and wants to extend those movements. 

Aside from these breaches, let’s look at Bathurst’s record so far at its current Coalgate mine: 

• In 2017 Bathurst was ordered to pay a $10,500 fine from 14 infringement notices for failing to protect waterways from sediment runoff from the mine. ECan’s Waihora zone manager Michaela Rees, told Stuff the company’s failure to fully establish sediment controls such as fencing, staged ponds and planting, was a “very serious issue”.  “This left the waterways or streams vulnerable as there was inadequate protection in place to manage the risk of sediment run-off during a large rainfall event, of which there have been several this year.”
• But Bathurst clearly hadn’t cleaned up – as, in early 2018 it was ordered to pay a further $9750 for 13 more infringements, also relating to sediment runoff from the mine, causing runoff to flow into local rivers.  All 27 infringements between June and November 2017, left large areas of soil exposed to heavy rainfall that subsequently washed it into the rivers, including Bush Gully creek. The runoff ultimately ends up in the critically polluted Lake Waihora.
• One would think Bathurst would have learned its lesson.  But in January 2020 Bathurst was again fined – this time for $18,000 – for breaching its consent and discharging sediment into the Bush Gully Stream, home to the endangered Canterbury Mudfish.  While the discharge was not deliberate Judge B Dwyer said Bathurst’s offending involved a “systemic failure to comply” with the terms of its consent, and it took place in a “vulnerable environment which is a highly important habitat of a nationally threatened species”.

These breaches bring not only Bathurst’s environmental record into question, but also Environment Canterbury’s ability to properly monitor the company to stop it from polluting.  After the first breach,  Rees said “If the company fails to comply again in any way, we won’t hesitate to escalate our enforcement response if necessary – our waterways must be protected.”

And yet Bathurst went on to breach the consent on numerous occasions. Enforcement has not been escalated.  This is not only a reflection on Bathurst, it is also a reflection on ECan’s ability to keep the miner under control.

ECan cannot take climate change into consideration 

The elephant in the room with this application is the fact that under the current Resource Management Act (RMA), in weighing up whether to grant Bathurst consent for the new mine,  ECan is prevented from taking the mine’s impact on the climate into account. 

This is a fundamental problem with the RMA that has been addressed in the Parliamentary Select Committee’s report back of the RMA Amendment Bill, which is currently waiting for its second and third readings.

However, even those amendments will take some time to come into force, as the proposed legislation stipulates that a National Policy Statement on Climate has to be put into place first.  

So ECan will have to ignore the fact that the mine will dig up coal that will be burned in dairy factories and spew forth a further 87,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. 

How did Bathurst get here: a history

In 2016, after Bathurst had finally won consent to open the Escarpment Mine on the Denniston Plateau, the price of coal was so low that it wasn’t profitable to export the coal.  Then Bathurst’s sole customer at that time, Holcim Cement, closed down. 

Bathurst mothballed the mine, and turned its sights on domestic coal production to keep itself afloat.  Armed with a contract to supply Fonterra, it ramped up its production in Southland and Canterbury, at  Takitimu mine in Nightcaps and Coalgate mine near Glentunnel where it has twice extended its mining. 

This amped-up production for dirty dairy allowed Bathurst to keep itself afloat financially. It then teamed up with Talley’s to form a new company, BT Mining, which bought up Solid Energy’s coal assets on the West Coast and some in the North Island, a deal finalised in 2017. 

Protest outside a Fonterra distribution plant in Christchurch

However, the Escarpment mine remains mothballed, as Bathurst doesn’t have the consent from DOC it needs to expand a road to get the coal off the plateau. It is trying to get this across the line as part of the post COVID-19 “shovel ready” projects. 

Things got worse for Bathurst in April 2020 when it lost its appeal against paying L&M Mining the $60 million it owed the company for the Denniston/Escarpment mining permits. 

Bathurst bought the Escarpment mine from L&M for US $35m with another $40m (NZ$60m), due when Bathurst had shipped 25,000 tonnes of coal and another $40m payment when one million tonnes of coal had been shipped.  Bathurst’s argument to get out of this deal was that it hadn’t “shipped” any Denniston coal out of the country as it only went to Holcim Cement in Westport, so it didn’t owe L&M Mining the cash. But in April the Court of Appeal disagreed, and Bathurst’s shares plummeted. 

Bathurst is now seeking leave to challenge the Court of Appeal decision to the Supreme Court. 

Talley’s brings political donations into the mix 

When Bathurst teamed up with Talley’s to form BT Mining – and bought up Solid Energy’s assets on the West Coast and in the North Island, it also took on board Talley’s political connections.  Talley’s is a major funder of NZ First, donating $10,000 to Shane Jones for the 2017 election campaign, and, it turns out, giving the NZ First Foundation nearly $27,000 between 2017 and 2019. 

In May 2020, Regional Development Minister Jones  promised West Coast councils that DOC stewardship land would be open for business if New Zealand First has any say in it after the election.

“If we are blessed with the opportunity to create another government, NZ First will be pushing for extractive industries to occupy a very important position, post-Covid, because we have to create jobs and generate overseas income.”

It is clear that Jones is out to bat for his friends at BT Mining, and we hope that these climate killers won’t get any traction in the upcoming “shovel ready” decisions to be made by the Government.   

As former Chief Executive of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Christiana Figueres wrote in the Financial Times: 

“The crux of the matter is that the pandemic-induced financial decisions made over the next 12 months will shape the global economy for the next decade, just when we must halve our emissions. The recovery packages will cost trillions of dollars. Governments are unlikely to have the resources to direct capital at such scale towards other urgent global needs for years. We cannot jump out of the frying pan of the pandemic and into the fire of exacerbated climate change. By that time we will have run out of fire hydrants.” 

The post From indigenous mudfish to the climate: you can’t trust Bathurst Resources appeared first on Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

If a coal miner – today given a green light to purchase sensitive Canterbury land for its coal –  thinks it will be able to build a new coal mine it is likely to face serious opposition, Coal Action Network Aotearoa said today.

The OIO has today given clearance for foreign-owned Bathurst Resources to buy 31ha of land near Glentunnel, where it says it wants to extend the current Canterbury Coal mine to continue supplying dairy factories. Its subsidiary, Canterbury Coal, produced 142,000 tonnes of coal from the area in the year to June 2019, 65,000 tonnes of which went to Fonterra’s Darfield factory (1).

108 Bush Gully Road, Glentunnel, where the OIO has just given Bathurst the green light to purchase 31.5 ha of land for coal mining.

“It’s like we’re living in two alternate realities: one where we’re having this generation’s ‘nuclear free moment’ on climate change, and the other is simply accelerated business as usual,” said Cindy Baxter of Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

“Along with polluting our waterways, Canterbury’s dirty dairy factories continue to pump carbon into the atmosphere, but this cannot go on, and we – as well as the government – need to draw a line in the sand,” she said.

“Getting New Zealand onto a 1.5˚C pathway means we have to stop burning coal, and stop new coal mines. There’s a huge concern about Canterbury’s coal use and Bathurst can expect massive opposition to this mine.”

She repeated the call recently made to Environment Minister David Parker by 42 organisations to amend the Resource Management Act remove the clause that specifically prevents any consideration of climate impacts in granting resource consents. The RMA amendment legislation was introduced last week with no sign of any such change.

“We need a whole of government approach to climate change. This should start with decisions made by the OIO and extend through the RMA and any other government decisions that could lead to our emissions continuing to rise,” said Cindy Baxter.

NOTE:
The NZ dairy industry is the country’s second largest coal user after the Steel Mill at Glenbrook.
Glenbrook:  800,000 tonnes
Dairy:  665,875 tonnes
Huntly coal plant:  430,000 tonnes

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