Fonterra vies with Genesis (Huntly Power Station) in being Aotearoa’s second largest coal user. Fonterra’s “commitment” to the climate (enthusiastically welcomed by Climate Change Minister James Shaw) is that it won’t build any new coal-fired power stations after 2030.  That’s the date at which the world has to halve its coal use, according to experts. Climate guru Dr James Hanson wants all coal use stopped by 2030. Any coal boiler built in 2030 would still be running in 2070, but the world needs to be out of coal altogether by 2050. 

Fonterra vies with Huntly power station in being New Zealand’s second-largest coal user.

Synlait, on the other hand, has stated that it won’t build any new coal boilers at all. From now.

In 2015, we calculated Fonterra’s coal use. Annually, then, it was at least 534,000 tonnes a year.  This was a very rough estimate, as the information is difficult to find. We will take that as a guide, until we can update these figures. It would help if Fonterra provided it themselves on their page, right? They’ve even signed a confidentiality agreement with the Government to stop people finding out. Hiding something? 

Every one of the projects below, and on the new coal page, has been announced with great fanfare, with media happily regurgitating Fonterra’s spin, rarely stopping to think about what the company could have done, or how big any of these moves are.  So here’s a breakdown of the main points on that page. 

Fonterra: 

We’re electrifying our Stirling site in Otago. By moving to electricity, coal use will be reduced by just under 10,000 tonnes per year (the equivalent weight of 122 Boeing 737 800’s).

CANA comment

Fonterra is desperate to find something big to compare this with. Oh, planes are big. The reality: at 11.3 MW, the boiler at Fonterra’s Stirling site is its smallest. In terms of a percentage of Fonterra’s coal use?  The 9400 tonnes it’s saving is just 1.7%.  Not nearly as impressive as jumbo jets.  And the conversion, Fonterra says, will take a few years to complete. 

Fonterra:

Our Brightwater site near Nelson has switched to co-firing biomass, helping reduce CO2 emissions by 25 percent, or about the same as taking 530 cars off the road.

CANA Comment

Brightwater is home to a massive horticultural area and Fonterra’s factory is right next to a timber mill:  there is so much biomass available, the company could easily access enough for a full, 100% switch to a clean boiler like the one at Burwood Hospital. Photo of burwood boiler?  It’d also help clean up the air: Brightwater is Nelson’s most air-polluted area.

The inside of Burwood Hospital’s state of the art biomass boiler.

And the cars?  New Zealand has 3.6 million cars, so the 530 is 0.014% of our car fleet. Slow clap, Fonterra. Perhaps the worst thing is that Fonterra didn’t even pay for this conversion: the taxpayer did, through an EECA grant.  The taxpayer stumped up about half. Fonterra got a ton of fawning media, complete with a Ministerial visit. 

Fonterra:

We’re trialing (sic) fuelling our Te Awamutu site with woodchips, which could reduce our carbon emissions by around 84,000 tonnes per year, or about the same as taking 18,500 cars off the road.

Jeanette Fitzsimons broke this down in our blog. Yes, it’s a step forward. But it’s only a trial, right?  Take home message? Fonterra’s boiler at Te Awamutu accounts for about 8% of its coal use.  92% – or another 231,250 cars’ worth of coal – to go.

Fonterra:

We’ve given-up our mining permit at Mangatangi in the Waikato and sold nearly 50 percent of the land acquired there for coal mining (296 hectares).

Fonterra realised, after many protests from local Iwi and concerned citizens, that it wasn’t a good look to be an actual coal miner, especially with a mine that would have been right beside the main highway to Tauranga. On many long weekends, activists from Auckland Coal Action hung banners off bridges on that highway alerting the traffic-jammed drivers to Fonterra’s proposed mine.

Auckland Coal Action protest Fonterra’s proposed Mangatangi coal mine.

In 2015 Fonterra managed to persuade then owner of the nearby Kopako coal mine, Solid Energy, to re-open it.  In February that year CANA announced the end of the Mangatangi mine for Fonterra, but they were quick to deny it, saying it had only been deferred. They finally admitted it in September 2015, telling local residents it was “on hold.”

Three years later in 2018 Fonterra’s spin doctors come up with a great new announcement: “we gave up our coal mining permit”.  Very forward-looking, sounds great, right?  All Fonterra did was save money – it didn’t use any less coal.  And saved a lot of nightmares for the image of it being a coal miner.

And in terms of its contribution to climate change from all this coal burning?  Fonterra has even managed to persuade the Government to give it free allocations of carbon credits, so it doesn’t even have to pay the price of its pollution.

Enough of the spin cycle, Fonterra, let’s see some real action.  Us taxpayers are sick of footing your dirty bills.

Outside a Fonterra distribution plant in Christchurch

The post Fonterra puts coal on spin cycle 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.