New Zealand Declares 10-Year Moratorium On Coal Fired Electrity Add-Ons
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 10.12.07
You want "Big Ideas" for mitigating climate change? New Zealand has one. A 10-year moratorium on building new coal plants to make electricity.
A coal moratorium similar to the one New Zealand has proposed is exactly what the US needs. It's such a simple idea, no Think Tank spin papers are needed - thank you very much. Those "green" industries who'd lobby against a proposed coal plant moratorium would have an acid test for their green ethical standards. Money that doesn't go into coal can go into more eco-efficient means of electricity generation. The list of benefits goes on.
You know those 200 temporary and 30 permanent jobs the proposed coal-plant announcement press releases always talk about? You can get those from geothermal plants like the one pictured (in California), or from natural gas fired plants, or from solar or nuclear thermal plants, for that matter.
Just take coal off the table for a decade and watch how fast the US can catch up to Europe's and Japan's relatively more clean economies, as marked by lower energy intensity [BTU's needed to create a unit of gross domestic product (GDP)].
The US could use a nice long moratorium to decide how important mountain top removal really is, and how best to protect the lives of coal miners for the next century. And to figure out how important it is to get more LNG ports built.
New Zealand is telling its state-owned electricity generators not to build any thermal power plants - which burn fossil fuels - over the next 10 years and is also considering applying the ban to privately owned power companies.The ban is part of the Government's energy strategy aimed at limiting the amount of fuel it has to import, as well as cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Energy Minister David Parker says the final strategy is largely unchanged from the draft paper the Government put out for consultation.
It includes a range of initiatives aimed at making New Zealand 90 per cent secure in its energy supplies by promoting the use of renewable power sources, mainly by using wind and geothermal power.
How to work out the specifics of a coal moratorium? To keep the back room politics to a minimum, you just have to say "no." Not a moratorium contingent on a non-existing EPA definition of Maximum Achievable Technology for pollution control. Not with exemptions for R&D pilot or pre-commercial. Not with exemptions for who ever says so. Just no.
Via::Power Engineering, "New Zealand issues ten-year ban on new thermal power plants" Image credit::Murdoch Univ., Geothermal Energy Systems, The Geysers geothermal power plant in California, USA
The Kiwi's continue to make important fundamental strides in sustainability from a systems level. I wonder how much of their confidence comes from their past experience in transforming their agriculture policies- which have led to one of the most sustainable, and profitable in the world?
Heh. This is sort of an empty moratorium if you know anything about New Zealand energy. They only have one coal plant (!), and it only produces about 10% of Kiwi electricity.
So, this isn't much of a sacrifice for them the way it would be for the US (doable) or China (a moratorium of this sort would not just never happen; it would totally screw any sort of economic growth, since China's economy is totally based off of cheap new power).
New Zealand is always a standard-bearer, though. First to give women the right to vote, they gave their indigenous people a fair shake at equality, the first (and still only, afaik) nuclear-free country, and now this.
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I appreciate your pragmatism. On the other hand, this pledge is about not building new coal fired plants.
"They only have one coal plant (!), and it only produces about 10% of Kiwi electricity."
Though others had been planned, and the ban also includes other thermal sources such as oil and gas. Given that the percentage of electricity from renewables has gradually slipped from something like 70% to 60% (off the top of my head), it's a change that needed to come.
Now, we just need to use more of that electricity to power our transport systems: Kiwis are still very heavy car users, the result of decades of low-density suburban sprawl. Roll on the wind-powered streetcars!