At Copenhagen, the NZ government said it would reduce CO2 emissions by 20%. But a proposal to manufacture diesel and urea from low grade Southland lignite would increase CO2 emissions by 20% and cost us taxpayers about $NZ 1 billion in free carbon credits to the coal companies.
The $NZ 1 billion is a conservative figure based on the Commissioner for the Environment’s calculation after she was refused access to Solid Energy’s own calculations.
Meanwhile, Solid Energy were explaining that they didn’t release their CO2 calculations because of ‘commercial sensitivity’. They then went on to explain that they would mitigate CO2 emissions by relying on science fiction ‘carbon capture’ measures among others.
So Solid Energy and others want to build a $NZ10 billion diesel plant. It won’t produce permanent local jobs in an area that already has the lowest unemployment rates in NZ. And processing 6 billion tonnes of lignite will come at a $NZ 1 billion financial cost to us all as well as an indeterminable environmental cost to us all.
I know that companies are in the business of making money. But really, what is it with these idiotic business propositions that are so decidedly divorced from the realities of climate collapse and current technological and scientific capabilities?
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