We’ve got lots of coal. Lots and lots and lots of coal. There are seams from Coromandel to the Taranaki - so much that it has never been worthwhile to drill down to find out how much more, and where. There are the lignite fields in Southland. There is the beautiful anthracite from the West Coast.
Gas would be better, but coal is certain. And, Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) has a nice EROI - in the range of 7 to 10.
We could locate an IGCC in the Waikato, say at Huntly where the mining is easy. The syngas could go into the pipeline there and/or be fed to the power station. An IGCC plant could be sold based on carbon capture and storage (CCS) and have significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions than the Huntly power station on coal. (I don’t know how much life is left in the turbines there.) With CCS the EROI drops to 4 to 7, which is still respectable. If you take the energy cost of mining the coal the EROI drops to 3 to 6 if the mining is open pit, which is feasible at Huntly.
In which case, what is not to love. NZ could showcase a low emissions future and have energy security.
Alternatively, if imported gas is cheaper, where are the plans for the terminals and why are they not being built. Australia has plenty of gas. But then hmmmm. We may have gas too.
So it’s not a matter of ‘no gas, big problem’, it’s a matter of planning and political choices.
John thanks for the excellent comment. We do have a lot of coal and it has value as a hedge against geo-political issues. Increasingly I am thinking that there is a case to be made for a modern coal fired power station with all the latest and greatest emissions reduction technology. The reason I say this is because NZ needs more baseload. Nuclear is going to take too long and probably cost too much, hydro is too hard with the RMA, gas has a whole series of issues at the moment and geothermal takes time too. Coal could be done quickly.
I had not fully considered IGCC due to EROI but you make a good case for further investigation.
Largely my central thesis is that the economy is a large open thermodynamic system that is accumulating entropy. As such it requires ever increasing energy to maintain. Because of this the aggregate EROI of our energy systems needs to increase to prevent thermodynamic collapse, or the Seneca cliff and Ugo Bardi puts it.
It is for this reason that I worry about low EROI sources but as you point out a domestic fuel source helps that wide boundary calculation.
Sorry but NZ already has a baseload surplus of hydro power. Take out the polluter in Bluff which we learn from Stuff and van Daalder today that, against industry advice, the government is granting the smelter around 600,000 New Zealand Units (NZUs) – carbon credits. It was set at 1,200,000 Units but our government caved...
Just , like Huntly where Genesis burns fossil fuels and is required to offset all their emissions by purchasing the equivalent amount of carbon credits for every tonne of coal or litre of fuel burnt. This cost in turn is passed on to the consumers power bill or payment at the petrol pump currently costing you an extra 9 cents per litre. Little wonder household consumer electricity bills have soared
The answer is simple send the smelter home and NZ can leisurely attract high energy consuming industry looking for a secure supply and safe location
Oh I heard this argument many times while working at the smelter. It would take at least a billion dollars and 10 years just to extend the South Island grid. Never mind upgrading the Cook Straight Cable or adapting the North Island grid. And good luck attracting businesses when the NZ Govt ignored the original Comalco power contract and raised rates (Muldoon) making the smelter barely profitable.
What do you know about Muldoon, William? You never met him eh? I did. He and his Energy Minister gave the Australian ConZincRioTinto a push start at your expense and mine. He also set up the now crippling pension scheme. Anyway the long established high end electricity users in Kawerau and Tokoroa have shut down. Closing Tiwai and reconfiguring the national grid would give the Bluff guys and dolls plenty of local work. They won’t need to emigrate to find new jobs
I thought of IGCC because of political sensitivities, to make coal palatable.
Personally I would cut to the chase with a modern coal fired station as you say.
And if we have 750MW of gas generated heat, then I expect a central IGCC plant might be cheaper than 70-odd conversions scattered around the countryside. And that is just Fonterra. In which case the problem isn’t just energy, it is the right form of the stuff. Striking another gas field would be better, but IGCC with CCS should cover the green bases.
Agreed in spades. However I doubt the large "green" contingent in your parliament or public will allow another coal plant to be built until their power bills and inflation bring harsh reality to the middle class kiwi.
I married the daughter of a Reporoa dairy farmer in Taupo (1977). Got my first NZ job as a metallurgist at NZAS in Invercargill. We raised a family there for 8 years then transferred to Boyne Smelters in QLD until 1990. Comalco transferred me to the USA where I retired happily. We have family and great friends in NZ and Oz, so travel there about every 3 years. I keep close contact with the news and economy of NZ.
Everywhere in the world where the UN, EU, individual country and State governments have jury rigged the tax systems, utility incentives, selective business subsidies and mandated "renewables", electricity prices have climbed impacting the poorest in their societies. The world is gradually waking up to what this means in terms of de industrialization of their countries as China and India go from strength to strength building coal fired plants and taking over Western industries lock, stock and barrel.
NZ, Oz, UK and Germany could go Net Zero today and it would have ZERO impact on CO2 emmissions.
Take care of your own Kiwi house please! It's a great country.
I know what you're saying, and I don't disagree, but there are a few other problems to add:
1. Fonterra mainly export v. low value added commodities (esp. milk powder, cheese, butter).
2. A huge amount of water is required to produce a litre of milk. Estimates of 11K litres of water per litre of milk for eg., though obviously some of this comes from rain, most requires energy of some sort (i.e. pumping from wells or rivers on farms plus that used on site).
3. Fonterra requires bonds to operate - not in itself a problem. The problem is they cannot sell on the market all the bonds they need operate, so the tax payer has to bail them out (in the guise of the RBNZ, who create the $ out of thin air to buy them - the data is on their website). So Fonterra in effect requires heavy subsidies from the tax payer while at the same time contributing to the debasement of the $ (which manifests as consumer price inflation).
So Fonterra's problems are more than just gas imo.
Interesting article. Luxon seems to be playing the long game, waiting for Aussie (perhaps) to pull out of Paris before we do. But this is yet another reason it’s misguided, these businesses need certainty. Having said that, I have been reading and listening to ,arterial from the generators and Transpower for some years now that used similar magical beliefs (until the recent TP CEO comments). I e wondered if it’s possible they actually believe it and concluded that somehow these smart people are blinded. Just as they were over covid and many are over the women can be men crap. Deluded. But how? Are they really that blinkered?
Hi Louise, thanks. I'm really not sure if they are this blinkered or not. But peddling these fanciful ideas does not help to generate the urgency required.
"Ok, so what this all means is that the pipeline distribution network owners are worried about declining gas supplies and want to depreciate their assets faster because they don’t want an expensive asset on their books that can’t generate any revenue."
The PDNOs do not exist . As far as I know First Gas Ltd remains the only LPG distributor. Did FGL make a submission to DPP4? FGL is actively trialing a hydrogen LPG cocktail in Otaki. Hydrogen can be produced cheaply and cleanly using our surplus off peak electricity generation capacity. No more spilling excess water over dams out to sea.
And as I've said before if we stop paying polluter-Comalco to export our electricity as aluminum ingots to Australia, then NZ has surplus gigawatts 24/7 to enjoy.
Hi Winston, good point. I don't know if First Gas submitted but I suspect they were promoting the accelerated depreciation if only for tax purposes alone. You are correct that they have been trialing a blend and if my memory serves me well it can be up to about 20% but even then, there are a quite a few fluid dynamic issues around burner flow rates etc. I'll admit I haven't looking into it too hard yet. I would be interested to know how much they lose in a carbon steel piping system as a blend.
We’ve got lots of coal. Lots and lots and lots of coal. There are seams from Coromandel to the Taranaki - so much that it has never been worthwhile to drill down to find out how much more, and where. There are the lignite fields in Southland. There is the beautiful anthracite from the West Coast.
Gas would be better, but coal is certain. And, Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) has a nice EROI - in the range of 7 to 10.
We could locate an IGCC in the Waikato, say at Huntly where the mining is easy. The syngas could go into the pipeline there and/or be fed to the power station. An IGCC plant could be sold based on carbon capture and storage (CCS) and have significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions than the Huntly power station on coal. (I don’t know how much life is left in the turbines there.) With CCS the EROI drops to 4 to 7, which is still respectable. If you take the energy cost of mining the coal the EROI drops to 3 to 6 if the mining is open pit, which is feasible at Huntly.
In which case, what is not to love. NZ could showcase a low emissions future and have energy security.
Alternatively, if imported gas is cheaper, where are the plans for the terminals and why are they not being built. Australia has plenty of gas. But then hmmmm. We may have gas too.
So it’s not a matter of ‘no gas, big problem’, it’s a matter of planning and political choices.
John thanks for the excellent comment. We do have a lot of coal and it has value as a hedge against geo-political issues. Increasingly I am thinking that there is a case to be made for a modern coal fired power station with all the latest and greatest emissions reduction technology. The reason I say this is because NZ needs more baseload. Nuclear is going to take too long and probably cost too much, hydro is too hard with the RMA, gas has a whole series of issues at the moment and geothermal takes time too. Coal could be done quickly.
I had not fully considered IGCC due to EROI but you make a good case for further investigation.
Largely my central thesis is that the economy is a large open thermodynamic system that is accumulating entropy. As such it requires ever increasing energy to maintain. Because of this the aggregate EROI of our energy systems needs to increase to prevent thermodynamic collapse, or the Seneca cliff and Ugo Bardi puts it.
It is for this reason that I worry about low EROI sources but as you point out a domestic fuel source helps that wide boundary calculation.
Sorry but NZ already has a baseload surplus of hydro power. Take out the polluter in Bluff which we learn from Stuff and van Daalder today that, against industry advice, the government is granting the smelter around 600,000 New Zealand Units (NZUs) – carbon credits. It was set at 1,200,000 Units but our government caved...
Just , like Huntly where Genesis burns fossil fuels and is required to offset all their emissions by purchasing the equivalent amount of carbon credits for every tonne of coal or litre of fuel burnt. This cost in turn is passed on to the consumers power bill or payment at the petrol pump currently costing you an extra 9 cents per litre. Little wonder household consumer electricity bills have soared
The answer is simple send the smelter home and NZ can leisurely attract high energy consuming industry looking for a secure supply and safe location
Oh I heard this argument many times while working at the smelter. It would take at least a billion dollars and 10 years just to extend the South Island grid. Never mind upgrading the Cook Straight Cable or adapting the North Island grid. And good luck attracting businesses when the NZ Govt ignored the original Comalco power contract and raised rates (Muldoon) making the smelter barely profitable.
What do you know about Muldoon, William? You never met him eh? I did. He and his Energy Minister gave the Australian ConZincRioTinto a push start at your expense and mine. He also set up the now crippling pension scheme. Anyway the long established high end electricity users in Kawerau and Tokoroa have shut down. Closing Tiwai and reconfiguring the national grid would give the Bluff guys and dolls plenty of local work. They won’t need to emigrate to find new jobs
I thought of IGCC because of political sensitivities, to make coal palatable.
Personally I would cut to the chase with a modern coal fired station as you say.
And if we have 750MW of gas generated heat, then I expect a central IGCC plant might be cheaper than 70-odd conversions scattered around the countryside. And that is just Fonterra. In which case the problem isn’t just energy, it is the right form of the stuff. Striking another gas field would be better, but IGCC with CCS should cover the green bases.
Agreed in spades. However I doubt the large "green" contingent in your parliament or public will allow another coal plant to be built until their power bills and inflation bring harsh reality to the middle class kiwi.
I married the daughter of a Reporoa dairy farmer in Taupo (1977). Got my first NZ job as a metallurgist at NZAS in Invercargill. We raised a family there for 8 years then transferred to Boyne Smelters in QLD until 1990. Comalco transferred me to the USA where I retired happily. We have family and great friends in NZ and Oz, so travel there about every 3 years. I keep close contact with the news and economy of NZ.
Everywhere in the world where the UN, EU, individual country and State governments have jury rigged the tax systems, utility incentives, selective business subsidies and mandated "renewables", electricity prices have climbed impacting the poorest in their societies. The world is gradually waking up to what this means in terms of de industrialization of their countries as China and India go from strength to strength building coal fired plants and taking over Western industries lock, stock and barrel.
NZ, Oz, UK and Germany could go Net Zero today and it would have ZERO impact on CO2 emmissions.
Take care of your own Kiwi house please! It's a great country.
Thanks William, great comment. I’m trying to look after our little nation by writing these missives and hoping to generate some awareness.
I know what you're saying, and I don't disagree, but there are a few other problems to add:
1. Fonterra mainly export v. low value added commodities (esp. milk powder, cheese, butter).
2. A huge amount of water is required to produce a litre of milk. Estimates of 11K litres of water per litre of milk for eg., though obviously some of this comes from rain, most requires energy of some sort (i.e. pumping from wells or rivers on farms plus that used on site).
3. Fonterra requires bonds to operate - not in itself a problem. The problem is they cannot sell on the market all the bonds they need operate, so the tax payer has to bail them out (in the guise of the RBNZ, who create the $ out of thin air to buy them - the data is on their website). So Fonterra in effect requires heavy subsidies from the tax payer while at the same time contributing to the debasement of the $ (which manifests as consumer price inflation).
So Fonterra's problems are more than just gas imo.
Interesting article. Luxon seems to be playing the long game, waiting for Aussie (perhaps) to pull out of Paris before we do. But this is yet another reason it’s misguided, these businesses need certainty. Having said that, I have been reading and listening to ,arterial from the generators and Transpower for some years now that used similar magical beliefs (until the recent TP CEO comments). I e wondered if it’s possible they actually believe it and concluded that somehow these smart people are blinded. Just as they were over covid and many are over the women can be men crap. Deluded. But how? Are they really that blinkered?
Ps shame on ComCom.
Hi Louise, thanks. I'm really not sure if they are this blinkered or not. But peddling these fanciful ideas does not help to generate the urgency required.
"Ok, so what this all means is that the pipeline distribution network owners are worried about declining gas supplies and want to depreciate their assets faster because they don’t want an expensive asset on their books that can’t generate any revenue."
The PDNOs do not exist . As far as I know First Gas Ltd remains the only LPG distributor. Did FGL make a submission to DPP4? FGL is actively trialing a hydrogen LPG cocktail in Otaki. Hydrogen can be produced cheaply and cleanly using our surplus off peak electricity generation capacity. No more spilling excess water over dams out to sea.
And as I've said before if we stop paying polluter-Comalco to export our electricity as aluminum ingots to Australia, then NZ has surplus gigawatts 24/7 to enjoy.
Hi Winston, good point. I don't know if First Gas submitted but I suspect they were promoting the accelerated depreciation if only for tax purposes alone. You are correct that they have been trialing a blend and if my memory serves me well it can be up to about 20% but even then, there are a quite a few fluid dynamic issues around burner flow rates etc. I'll admit I haven't looking into it too hard yet. I would be interested to know how much they lose in a carbon steel piping system as a blend.
The First Gas experiment starts with a very low 4% blend from their own spiel and then, if successful, will increase - but only as far as 20%
Monterrey may have to start drilling and partner with of the explorers