Climate Change: Madness

Over the last few days Wellington has been hammered by torrential rain and floods, and one person is still missing dead. So naturally its the perfect time for a bunch of Aussie grifters to announce a huge, high-emissions project, a Southland lignite-to-urea factory:

Australian company Victorian Hydrogen has applied to explore for lignite on 3141 hectares of Southland farmland in the hopes of eventually setting up a 1.5 million tonne per year urea fertiliser production plant.

The executive director of Victorian Hydrogen, Allan Blood, said the proposed $3 billion lignite-to-urea project would give New Zealand’s agricultural sector self-sufficiency.

The project is expected to apply for approvals under the fast-track regulatory process. Blood said key milestones would include applying for regulatory consents and engaging with landowners, completing initial geological and hydrological studies by spring 2026 and progressing to detailed engineering design, and a targeted three-year pathway from the conclusion of studies currently underway, to full production.

Unmentioned: the emissions from the project. But the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment looked at this when Solid Energy was proposing similar insanity back in 2010; they found that making urea from lignite produced 1.3 tons of carbon for every ton or product (compared to 1.1 tons for making it from natural gas at Kapuni, or 0.8 tons for making it from natural gas in the Middle East). So 1.5 million tons of urea a year from lignite is 2 million tons of carbon dioxide - a figure completely inconsistent with our future carbon budgets.

Why are they looking at Southland? Because their plans to do it in Australia have fallen through: the state government won't give them consents, and no-one will sell them coal anyway. Whereas Aotearoa has corrupt politicians willing to grant consents for "donations", and a policy of explicit pollution subsidies, so the grifters will be paid to destroy the climate. Interestingly, those subsidies are justified on the basis of preventing "emissions flight", but as Middle East production is in fact cleaner than domestic, it seems that it is in fact a perverse incentive for dirty production.

While America's latest Middle east war and the resulting disruptions in international fertiliser flows are being used as a justification here, if consented this factory won't be producing before 2030. By which time you would expect those disruptions to have been resolved. So its an opportunistic grift, presenting a dirty "solution" to a problem which won't exist when it is complete, aimed at collecting huge subsidies. It should not be permitted to progress. And if the present regime corruptly grants it fast track approval, it should be legislatively revoked by the next government. We simply cannot afford this madness.

Drawn

A ballot for three Member's Bills was held today, and the following bills were drawn:

• Life Jackets for Children and Young Persons Bill (Cameron Brewer)
• Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Restrictions on Issue of Off-Licences and Low and No Alcohol Products) Amendment Bill (Mike Butterick)
• Crown Minerals (Prohibition on Coal Mining) Amendment Bill (Julie Anne Genter)

The latter is key climate change legislation, basically ending any new permits for coal mining or prospecting, while leaving existing permits unaffected. I expect National to vote it down, but it will become a stake in the ground for the next government, and may cause Shane Jones to have an aneurysm on the floor of the House.

I was expecting a bigger ballot, but they'd already held another ballot yesterday, resulting in the introduction of Ingrid Leary's Property Law (Sunset Clauses) Amendment Bill.

Climate Change: The end of coal in the UK

It's official: coal has been eliminated from the UK's electricity system:

Britain’s only remaining coal power plant at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire will generate electricity for the last time on Monday after powering the UK for 57 years.

The power plant will come to the end of its life in line with the government’s world-leading policy to phase out coal power which was first signalled almost a decade ago.

The closure marks the end of Britain’s 142-year history of coal power use which began when the world’s first coal-fired power station, the Holborn Viaduct power station, began generating electricity in 1882.

Good. Coal has been a significant source of greenhouse gases, and its elimination from global energy systems is vital if we are to get climate change under control. So its a huge positive step from a historical polluter.

Sadly, here in Aotearoa, Shane Jones is trying to push us back onto coal, taking us in entirely the wrong direction in service to his fossil fuel masters. So much for trying to do our bit. Tim Winton is right: our leaders are collaborators with the fossil fuel industry. And if they don't like that word, or the public anger that comes with it, then maybe they should stop collaborating in our destruction.

The wrong direction

Some good news on climate change today: the energy transition away from fossil fuels is picking up speed, and renewables now make up 30% of global electricity supply. Meanwhile, in Aotearoa, we're moving in the opposite direction, with Genesis Energy announcing that it will resume importing Indonesian coal.

Their official reason is to "keep the lights on" in a context of declining gas supply. But its worth noting that Gensis - one of our worst fossil polluters - is directly invested in the gas industry, and therefore has an interest in supporting the governments narrative that our options are basically coal or gas. That simply wasn't true. So they've decided to try and make it true.

(An interesting point: Genesis had consent for an 858 MW wind farm, big enough to replace Huntly, and they sat on it for a decade and then just let it expire. They could have solved this problem and made Huntly redundant a decade ago, but they'd rather burn coal and destroy the planet).

Meanwhile, in reality: we have 1.1 GW of consented and under construction solar, and 1.3 GW of consented and under construction wind, plus huge pipelines of both in the preliminary stages. We should build them. We also added 150MW of rooftop solar in the last year - a decent-sized power station. We should build more of that too. We can fix this problem with wind and solar and batteries, and every MW of renewables we build means less coal and gas burned. Every MW we build means less profits for the ecocidaires in the fossil fuel industry. And the government should be making it a holy fucking mission to drive those murderers into bankruptcy. Instead, it seems that National prefers complicity.

Climate Change: Criminal ecocide

We are in the middle of a climate crisis. Last year was (again) the hottest year on record. NOAA has just announced another global coral bleaching event. Floods are threatening UK food security. So naturally, Shane Jones wants to make it easier to mine coal:

Resources Minister Shane Jones has announced changes to coal mine consenting he says reduce barriers to extraction and bring it into line with other types of mining.

The government's first Resource Management Amendment Bill, to be introduced next month, will make changes to the Resource Management Act, freshwater environmental standards, and the National Policy Statements for Freshwater Management and Biodiversity.

It will remove additional controls for coal mining introduced by Labour that were set to end the consenting pathway for existing thermal coal mines from 31 December 2030.

This is the action of a glue-sniffing sociopath. We need to be ending coal, not enabling it. Instead, Jones seems to want to let the coal industry grub a few more dollars by setting fire to the planet.

This criminal act of ecocide cannot be allowed to stand. The next government needs to make it a priority to revoke fossil fuel mining permits and consents, with no compensation, and shut down this murderous industry for good.

Climate Change: Not just phase-out, but criminalisation

As the climate crisis has worsened, there seems to have finally been an understanding that we need to phase out fossil fuels. Twelve countries, including most of our Pacific whanau, have endorsed calls for a fossil-fuel non-proliferation treaty. But the talks at COP28 in Dubai have failed to get the message, producing a draft with only vague talk of "reducing both consumption and production" rather than a full phase out. Which is what happens when you get an oil executive to run your climate change conference.

Many countries are refusing to sign a death certificate for small island states, which is good. We should also note that this isn't just about small island states - while they're on the front line, and may be first to drown, ultimately all of us are at risk. If climate change is not stopped, we face fires, floods, famines, sudden and large rises in sea-level, mass-migration, and ultimately a collapse in global agriculture and the civilisation it allows. And fossil fuels are the weapon which is causing this.

I use that word – “weapon” - deliberately. We think of fossil fuels as just an energy source, something to run the car or a factory. But like tobacco, every ton of fossil fuels we use is doing us damage. That damage is global, indiscriminate, and - if not stopped - promises to be every bit as destructive as global nuclear war.

Current models for a fossil fuels treaty use the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as a model, adopting its pillars of non-proliferation, phase-out, and a just transition. But the use of nuclear weapons is a crime, and those who use them are criminals and terrorists, and we need to start adopting that thinking for fossil fuels as well. So we need a fourth pillar: criminalisation. We have models here too: the chemical weapons, anti-personnel mines, and nuclear weapons treaties all require their parties to criminalise violations on their territory or by their citizens (so e.g. its a crime for a kiwi anywhere in the world to develop, trade, use, or facilitate chemical weapons). We need to adopt such measures for fossils fuels after they have been phased out - or outside of a phase-out program (so e.g. in countries which refuse to be a party).

Obviously, not every country will sign such a treaty - the criminal petro-states won't. Which is why we need a fifth pillar: financial sanctions against fossil fuel companies and executives and their enablers, so that criminals who remain outside the phase-out regime cannot openly sell their climate weapon or enjoy the profits of their crime. we have a useful model here too: the current sanctions against oligarchs and companies supporting Putin's criminal invasion of Ukraine. If the fossil fuel industry won't phase down, that's how we need to treat them.

People might object to the framing of fossil fuel executives and traders as criminals, but these people are deliberately and knowingly trying to kill us for profit. They are deliberately and knowingly trying to burn our homes, drown our cities, and starve and bake us to death. What else should we call them?

Climate Change: A slow victory over coal

The climate movement has a lot of strands, with different philosophies of action and targets for change. Some target governments, some push for individual change. Some use lobbying, others use protest at varying levels of disruption. One strand has focused on targeting the money that allows fossil fuels to be emitted, hoping to force decarbonisation by cutting it off. And it seems to be bearing some fruit:

New coal power projects are becoming “effectively uninsurable” outside China because so many insurance companies have ruled out support for them, a report has found.

Recent commitments to stop underwriting coal by prominent US insurers AIG and Travelers have brought the number of coal insurance exit policies to 41, according to the latest industry scorecard by the climate campaign Insure Our Future.

The scorecard ranks the top global fossil fuel insurers on the quality of their fossil fuel exclusion policies. It shows that 62% of the reinsurance market and 39% of the primary insurance market are now covered by coal exclusions, with Allianz, Axa and Axis Capital ranking top for the robustness and breadth of their policies.

Many of the remaining insurers without coal exclusions are not active in the fossil fuel sector.

And it makes sense: coal projects increase costs to insurance companies by creating climate chaos. Dumping them (and so making them impossible) is an excellent way to limit those costs. And hopefully they'll figure that out about gas and oil too.

But of course, the UK’s Lloyd’s of London - a club of rich people who insured the slave trade - is the big laggard. Which I guess makes them a prime target for disruption by the other parts of the climate movement.

Decarbonising the schools

The government has announced it will be replacing all coal boilers in schools by 2025:

All remaining coal boilers in New Zealand schools will be replaced with cleaner wood burners or electric heating by 2025, at a cost of $10 million, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced.

The coal boiler removal is expected to reduce carbon emissions by 35,400 tonnes over 10 years, the equivalent of removing about 1400 cars from the roads.

It is part of the latest spend from the $220m State Sector Decarbonisation Fund, with a further $12.92m going to other projects.

Good. Its appalling that we're still burning coal for heat in the 21st century, and removing it will help both lower domestic demand for this dirty fuel, and build experience on the best ways to replace old boilers with new, efficient heat sources. And the latter should help with wider decarbonisation and the eventual removal of industrial burners.

And now obviously they need to move into removing gas, and replacing those boilers with heat pumps and solar panels.

Climate Change: An industry in denial

Over the past few years it has become clear that coal has no future in Aotearoa. Rising carbon prices, a ban on new boilers and a legislated phase-out for existing infrastructure are going to drive it out of the market. To reinforce this, the government signed up for an anti-coal pledge at COP26 in Glasgow (though they did this without any new policy commitments, of course). But despite all this, the coal industry simply isn't getting the message:

However, both Bathurst Resources and New Vale and Ohai Coal say they will not be changing long-term strategies as a result of the international commitments.

Bathurst Resources chief executive Richard Tacon said it was still working to continue to supply coal to customers until 2037, a timeframe that had been decided upon by larger industries in consultation with the Government.

[...]

The New Vale mine had more than 20 years of life left and employed 42 people, and as long as it remained profitable mining would continue, he said.

It had not begun planning for the eventual phase-out of coal, he said.

“I don’t think it’s going to happen. At the end of the day, they haven’t got a replacement for coal ... there’s a lot of unanswered questions,” he said.

This is the sound of an industry in deep, deep denial about its lack of a future. And that denial and refusal to shut down is going to lead to more coal being burned and higher emissions. So what can we do about it? I think the answer is to bring the policy forward and kill it faster. We need an immediate legislative ban on new coal infrastructure, and the phase-out needs to be brought forward to 2030 (or earlier, if we think we can get away with it). It also needs to be coupled with amendments to the Crown Minerals Act and RMA to ban new exploration permits and phase out all existing mining permits and resources consents for coal mining. Again, 2030 seems like an appropriate date to use. The market isn't going to kill this dirty, polluting industry by itself, so we need government to put a legislative stake through its heart.

Climate Change: Will NZ end fossil fuels?

Good news: New Zealand apparently signed up with other countries to set an end date for fossil fuels:

A group of countries at the COP26 climate summit have committed to setting an end date for oil and gas exploration and extraction.

The alliance is led by Costa Rica and Denmark, and includes Ireland, France and Greenland.

New Zealand has joined the alliance as an associate member, as has the US state of California.

Aotearoa cannot have core status because of the ongoing provision of on-shore drilling permits, especially in Taranaki.

This sounds good, except just yesterday we had the unpleasant sight of James Shaw saying that the UN's call for countries to come back with more ambitious climate pledges next year somehow didn't apply to us - a statement which saw him win a well-deserved Fossil of the Day. So it's unclear if this is a real commitment, or just more PR from a duplicitous, fossil fuel-addicted government.

But what if it was real? It would mean we'd need to legislate to immediately stop issuing new exploration, prospecting and mining permits for fossils fuels, and to sunset existing permits (and the sooner, the better). There's a stab at what such legislation would look like here. Any MP serious about ending the fossil fuel industry in Aotearoa is welcome to put it in the ballot.

Climate Change: We need to actually act on coal

Yesterday at COP in Glasgow, Aotearoa joined an international alliance to phase out coal-powered electricity generation. Which is obviously a great headline, which is what the government was after, but raises the obvious question: are we actually going to act on it?

The Global Coal to Clean Power Transition Statement commits its parties to "transition away from unabated coal power generation in the 2030s (or as soon as possible thereafter)". Which is an easy, business-as-usual pledge as far as New Zealand is concerned, given that Genesis, owners of the only coal-fired power station in New Zealand, have said they plan to transition Huntly to dry-year backup from 2025 and shut it down by 2030. It also commits us to immediately cease issuing permits for new coal-fired power plants, which the government has been promising to do (but hasn't done yet) for four years already. So if the government is actually serious about this, we'll hopefully see thermal ban legislation reintroduced and passed rapidly.

But that still leaves the question of the speed of the phase out. 2030 is a long way away, and every year we let Huntly keep burning coal means another 2 - 4 million tons of carbon in the atmosphere. At which stage its worth highlighting the first, and most important, commitment: "to rapidly scale up our deployment of clean power generation and energy efficiency measures in our economies". If the government took this seriously, it would mean a crash program of building wind and solar generation to allow a quicker shutdown of Huntly and to displace other fossil generation from the market. Will they do it?

I think they'd be stupid not to. As I've argued here, the government's internal carbon price of $150/ton means it is cost-effective to build new generation to replace Huntly and other fossil generation on carbon grounds alone. There are also wider social benefits in the form of lower electricity prices for all, as fossil generation currently sets the electricity price, so displacing it out of the market will see that price set by cheaper renewables. And its not like we can rely on the market to solve this - a recent analysis from the Electricity Authority found that the big gentailers are refusing to build in order to "maximis[e] returns on their existing assets" - that is, keep prices high. This is an obvious market failure, and clear grounds for the government to step in build what the market won't. And if it hurts the existing dirty generators, then good.

One mine at a time...

Some good news for the climate today: another coal mine is closing:

The Ohai coal mine is closing in two weeks and rehabilitation of the site is expected to begin next month.

Ohai and New Vale coal general manager Antony Stodart said “business at the Ohai based coal mine is coming to an end after the decision was made to cease mining operations.

“The decision comes after months of deliberation by the board, assessing the long-term financial viability of the business,” he said.

September 30 will be the last trading day for the public to purchase coal direct from the mine.

According to MBIE, Ohai produced 32,963 tons of coal last year. That's just under 65,000 tons of carbon which will no longer be destroying the atmosphere every year. And every ton helps. But there's still 16 more coal mines we need to get rid of, and the best way to do it is by killing their market and forcing electrification by forbidding people to burn the dirty stuff.

The real cost of Huntly

What's the real cost of the Huntly power station? 4 million tons of carbon dioxide a year:

Genesis Energy emitted more carbon dioxide in generating electricity last year than any year in the last decade, as it used more coal to make up for a lack of hydropower and gas.

[...]

The energy generator and retailer put out 4029 kilotonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in the last financial year, 82.5 percent more than the average of 2207 kilotonnes between 2016 and 2020, and more than any year dating back to at least 2010, as far as Genesis' publicly available statistics go.

This is about 5 percent of the country's total emissions.

At the government's internal valuation of $150 a ton, the social cost of those emissions is $600 million a year. Which makes it economic to spend that much a year on killing it to eliminate those emissions. At current costs, it is worthwhile for the government to do that with just three and a half years of emissions (versus 5 in my previous estimate).

Genesis could be part of this solution itself, but it refuses to be (wouldn't want that price to drop!) And their announcement today of large investments in grid connected solar is welcome, but also essentially PR window-dressing: a tiny fraction of what is needed to put Huntly out of business, and so clearly designed to keep it - and the windfall profits it generates - around for as long as possible. And again, if the market is not going to fix this problem, then it is clearly time for the government to step in and fix it for them.

Looking for more coal is indefensible

Siberia is burning. China is flooding. Westport flooded last weekend. And against this backdrop of climate breakdown, the Southland District Council thinks its a good time to approve new coal exploration.

This is a terrible idea. But its also a waste of time. Any coal discovered can never be burned - not if Southland wants to keep its neighbours in Invercargill above water, anyway - so there is literally no point even looking for it. The best thing we can do with coal is leave it in the ground and forget about it. And even Southland District mayor Gary Tong seemed to recognise how indefensible his position was: he didn't want to say why the council had approved it, and certainly didn't want to say whether he had personally supported it (in the end, he admitted he did, with some mumbling about "jobs" and that they'd just get "Crown Minerals" - actually the Minister - to approve it instead. Well, then the Minister can be the climate criminal and face the lawsuit rather than him).

We need this to stop happening - both to remove the risk of further coal being burned, but also to stop companies from wasting their resources pursuing an asset which will ultimately become stranded and valueless. How do we do it? An immediate amendment to the Crown Minerals Act forbidding any future exploration or mining permits for coal and other fossil fuels would be a start, along with a sunset clause on existing permits and resource consents. That would both cut off supply, and send a clear message to existing coal users that they need to transition to carbon-free alternatives. The only question is how long we give them to phase out: five years or ten.

Update: And if any MP wants to work on this, here's the first stab at a member's bill to do those things: the Crown Minerals (Ending Fossil Fuels) Amendment Bill. It needs work, in particular on transitional provisions to state clearly that the new provisions prevail and apply to all pending applications, and that no compensation is payable (and on unpicking previous transitional provisions which preserve rights against past amendments) - but its a start.

Climate Change: Killing coal locally

If we are to avoid dangerous levels of climate change and making huge chunks of the Earth uninhabitable, we need to end fossil fuel use as quickly as possible. The International Energy Agency has recommended an immediate end to fossil fuel development. An obvious way to do this is by national policy, but that doesn't seem to be happening. But a group in Nelson is trying to do it locally as well:

A group of concerned citizens is calling on Nelson City Council and Tasman District Council to work with central government and industry to end coal use in Nelson Tasman by 2025.

[...]

The group calls on Nelson City Council and Tasman District Council to work with central government and industry toward three goals:

1. Prohibit new resource consents for coal use or mining, effectively immediately.

2. End all existing consents for coal use or mining by 2025.

3. Ensure adequate monitoring of all current coal users according to the conditions of the relevant resource consent.

How would they do that? By amending the appropriate RMA planning documents to make mining and burning coal prohibited activities. Ending existing consents will be harder, and may require legislation from central government, but if there is any provision for consents to be reviewed, that may be able to be used. The third is of course something local authorities should be doing anyway; if they're not, they're not doing their jobs properly.

This strategy isn't something that should be limited to Nelson and Tasman, however. All regional councils regulate coal burning through their air quality plans, so all of them can be pressured to shut down pollution at source. Mining is controlled by district councils (and mostly rural ones at that), but they can be pressured to. So, if your local authority is currently reconsidering its plans, get together with friends, and start applying pressure.

The economics of killing Huntly

RNZ reports that Genesis Energy's use of coal has spiked over the past few years, as they use to burn it rather than pay for gas:

New Zealand has significantly increased its use of coal in recent years, despite its status as the worst, most polluting fossil fuel on the planet.

In the first three months of this year, the same amount of coal was used to generate electricity as in all of 2016 and 2017 combined. Coal generated 10.35 petajoules from January to March, slightly under the 10.52 petajoules in all of 2016 and 2017, according to MBIE's Quarterly Energy Statistics, released yesterday.

10.35 PJ is just under a million tons of CO2, in three months. And that was in summer, when load should be low. For winter, they've cut a deal with Methanex so they can burn gas, but that's not exactly a clean fuel either.

How much is this costing is? The government is meant to internally value carbon at $150 a ton. So Huntly burning coal for a single quarter costs us ~$140 million. A quarter. Gas isn't as harmful as coal, so its carbon value is only ~$100 million a quarter. And when you start adding that up, its doesn't take long before you're talking Real Money.

(Genesis will be paying some of this cost - ~$40 a ton - through the ETS. But that's a tiny fraction of the social cost of the damage it is causing, and it shows the scale of the effective subsidy we are giving it to pollute)

What could we do with this money? Well, a standard-sized windfarm costs ~$300 million. If Huntly burns coal half the time and gas the other half, you can basicly buy one and half windfarms every year to reduce its emissions. You need about seven to replace it completely, so its economic for the government to completely replace Huntly with wind over five years. And that is exactly what they should do: establish a special purpose SOE solely to build renewables, with the explicit purpose of driving fossil fuels out of the market permanently (and as a bonus, they get a revenue-generating asset). Alternatively, they could just pay existing power companies to bring forward construction of already-consented projects, or to plan and build new ones (which is a good idea, given that a whole bunch of consents will expire in the next few years). And from next year, they'll have a dedicated pot of money from ETS revenues to fund it.

But its also worth remembering that Huntly isn't the only villain here - there are a pile of gas power stations too. And exactly the same logic applies to them: it is economicly worthwhile for the government to replace them in a fairly short timeframe; the only question is exactly how short.

How does the government still not know this?

For the past two years the government has been trying to decarbonise the education sector, funding schools to replace dirty old coal boilers with heat pumps and solar panels. But according to Stuff this morning, they still don't know how many they need to replace:

An estimated 1150 state schools burn fossil fuels to heat classrooms, but the Government doesn’t have an exact figure, or a full list of affected schools.

This suggests the Government’s funding to date – $55 million to convert 90 schools to green fuels – will cover a small fraction of the problem.

[...]

Pressed for the numbers, the Ministry of Education said there are at least 200 boilers in schools burning coal, an estimated 150 burning diesel and roughly another 800 burning LPG or natural gas (the fossil form of methane).

How does the government not know this? They put this policy in place two years ago. It will have been under development for a year before that. You would expect that in that development process someone would have asked how big the problem was, so they would know how much it was going to cost. And unlike Stuff, whose OIA requests just get ignored by incompetant and lawless school boards, the Ministry of Education can demand schools provide information, and these demands get actioned. If they didn't know when they developed the policy, they have absolutely no excuse for not knowing it now.

But I guess that, like school maintenance, knowing means having to pay to fix it, which for an agency under constant budget pressure from a government still dedicated to austerity means a strong incentive to ignore problems and not know things until forced to. Which does not bode well for the effectiveness of this programme, or its durability.

Climate Change: Doing the minimum again

Back in February the Climate Change Commission recommended a ban on new coal-fired boilers, and a phase out of existing ones by 2037. And today, the government has said they will implement that policy, and backed it up with funding to help transition some of our large pollution sources:

Coal-fired boilers used by heavy industry will soon be a thing of the past.

The government has announced a ban new low and medium temperature boilers from the end of this year and plans on phasing out existing ones by 2037.

An option proposed is to also prohibit other new fossil fuel boilers where suitable alternative technology exists and it is economically viable, the government said.

It was the first step taken in response to recommendations from the Climate Commission, and would reduce carbon emissions within the first three years equivalent to removing 49,000 cars from the roads.

Which is good, and helps, but at the same time: 2037 is not "soon", and it reinforces the sense that the government is just doing the minimum, complying with the Commission's recommendations rather than looking for ways they can go beyond them. In this case, they should be looking at a much faster phase-out - surely ten years is more than enough time for everyone with a dirty coal-fired boiler to replace it - combined with restrictions on new gas installations, and ultimately, a ban on mining and importing coal (with a revocation of existing consents). We also need to keep in mind that fossil fuels kill, and getting rid of them is a public health necessity as well as a climate change one. But instead, the government just seems to be dragging its feet.

One mine at a time...

Bathurst Resources is closing its Malvern Hills coal mine:

A coal mine in rural Canterbury is set to close, despite owners applying for consent for expansion and increased coal extraction just last year.

The 52-hectare Bathurst Resources mine is situated in the Malvern Hills, about 20 kilometres west of Darfield.

Acting chief executive Russell Middleton said on Wednesday the company had “regrettably” decided to close the mine, which had been extracting about 100,000 tonnes of low-sulphur coal a year, largely suppling local food processors near the site.

“We have been working towards economic solutions for keeping the mine open with Environment Canterbury, Selwyn District Council and our customers, but these have not been successful.”

100,000 tons of coal means roughly 200,000 tons of emissions avoided every year. That's about a quarter of a percent of our total from this one facility - or about 10% of the cut we need to make to meet our 2025 budget. Which is a good start, and hopefully we'll see more. The question now is whether Fonterra will get the message, and stop burning coal at its dirty Darfield dairy factory, or whether it will try and cling to dirty, outdated technology.

Climate Change: Ending coal in Portugal

Back in 2016, the Portuguese government announced plans to stop burning coal by 2030. But progress has come much quicker, and they're now scheduled to close their last coal plant by the end of this year:

The Sines coal plant in Portugal went offline at midnight yesterday evening (14 January), leaving the country with just one remaining coal power station in operation, which is scheduled for closure in November.

Portuguese energy utility EDP announced its decision to shut down the 1,296 MW Sines coal plant in July last year, bringing the closure forward by two years – from 2023 to 2021. EDP’s initial plans were to close Sines in 2030.

The decision is “part of EDP group’s decarbonisation strategy” and was taken in a context where energy production increasingly depends on renewable sources, the company said back in July.

[...]

This leaves Portugal with just one remaining coal power plant in operation, Pego, which is already scheduled for closure in November this year, campaigners said.

Once it closes, Portugal will become the fourth coal-free state in Europe - unless someone else beats them to it, of course. France, Slovakia, the UK, Ireland and Italy are all planning to end coal by 2025, and it seems that once that decision is made, action tends to go faster rather than slower. Meanwhile in New Zealand Huntly is still legally allowed to burn coal. Hopefully that will change once the Climate Change Commission delivers its initial budgets and reduction plans in a couple of weeks.