energy

Categories under energy

Marching backwards to diesel

Written By: - Date published: 4:38 pm, July 1st, 2015 - 35 comments

Replacing electric trains with diesel is the kind of short-term stupid decision making that is unfortunately typical of the way NZ is currently run.

An open letter to Andrew Little

Written By: - Date published: 6:08 pm, June 26th, 2015 - 433 comments

A respectful open letter to Andrew Little with suggestions for how to win the next election!

More jobs gone at Solid Energy – thanks Bill English

Written By: - Date published: 9:58 am, May 8th, 2015 - 11 comments

113 more jobs to go at Solid Energy’s Stockton Mine. Bill English killed Solid Energy, these job losses are his.

Bill English killed Solid Energy

Written By: - Date published: 8:46 am, April 3rd, 2015 - 96 comments

More economic genius from the Nats.

Drill baby drill will not work

Written By: - Date published: 11:14 am, March 31st, 2015 - 25 comments

Simon Bridges announced yesterday the release of the 2015 block offer. Potentially oil companies could be drilling in deep sea pristine environmental areas off the West Coast where the endangered Maui’s Dolphin lives. He calls for a “mixed balance” of energy generation. But all this means is that he wants the good mixed with the bad.

The last gasp of oil

Written By: - Date published: 8:23 am, January 23rd, 2015 - 109 comments

Fracking has created a short term oil glut. That’s bad news for climate change. Could we at least find a silver lining in this carbon cloud, or will it be business as usual?

Power poverty on the up

Written By: - Date published: 8:18 am, December 19th, 2014 - 56 comments

The government has failed to tackle NZ’s on-going housing crisis. Fuel/energy poverty is increasing, with a higher proportion of households unable to afford any heating.  More Kiwis are renting than in the 2006 census, & more Aucklanders live in over-crowded households.

So what is happening with the price of oil?

Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, December 18th, 2014 - 137 comments

The price of crude oil has nearly halved in the past six months and is causing massive repercussions throughout the world with both the Russian economy and the American Shale Oil industry under threat.  The geopolitical implications are complex.

Partially Privatised Power Companies Chief Executives’ salaries surge

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, November 5th, 2014 - 13 comments

Chief executive remuneration packages in the privatised power companies have surged post float.

NRT: National lets Shell drill illegally

Written By: - Date published: 10:28 am, October 26th, 2014 - 14 comments

Illegal drilling in our “Exclusive Economic Zone” gets let off with a “warning”.

Pick up the ball

Written By: - Date published: 10:53 am, September 28th, 2014 - 30 comments

In the spirit of new badly needed Left Unity. The Left opposition needs to start setting the agenda. First “feed the kids” needs to be picked up. Second the corporate welfare for Solid Energy needs a lot of scrutiny. So does the the state funding of oil exploration.

Idiots, Cowards and Bastards.

Written By: - Date published: 4:18 pm, September 22nd, 2014 - 47 comments

When they write about it at all, the media tends to produce a lot of smash on the issue of global warming, and I’ve had enough of the crap. I apologise for both the length of this post and the number of data chewing links (pdfs and video). I’m hoping to write a number of posts looking at global warming from a variety of perspectives, and hopefully, it’ll be possible to keep others somewhat briefer than this one.

Environment on the edge

Written By: - Date published: 9:01 am, April 20th, 2014 - 41 comments

On Al Jazeera NewsHour this morning, there were two reports on environmental issues in different parts of the planet: stories of the tension between pursuit of economic “growth” and the destruction of the environment. In both countries, there are attempts to develop renewables, without changing the whole system.

NRT: Is the Minister of Energy a muppet?

Written By: - Date published: 3:55 pm, April 9th, 2014 - 11 comments

When looking at Simon Bridges – a purported government minister. You have to remember that he is damn sloppy even for a politician. But oh so typical of his usual muppet behaviour is that he wasn’t aware that he was opening up our biggest forest park for oil and gas exploration. Of course it could just be National’s bulldoze anything for a little immediate profit….

Local Bodies: The Great Oil Gamble and Wasted Opportunities

Written By: - Date published: 8:37 am, April 7th, 2014 - 24 comments

Gamble Big’ rather than ‘Think Big’ should be this National Government’s mantra.Opening up huge areas of our land and territorial waters for open slather oil and gas exploration is a gamble on so many levels. When many countries like Denmark are actively chasing a sustainable, clean energy future, this government is throwing all its hopes on a big strike of fossil fuel.

Drill baby drill

Written By: - Date published: 8:12 am, April 3rd, 2014 - 40 comments

Two days after the IPCC has warned us of the threat posed by climate change and Simon Bridges has announced a huge block offer of parts of New Zealand and much of its territorial water.  This will include the pristine waters off Auckland’s west coast, home of Maui’s dolphin.  In a world that has to address its consumption of petroleum you have to question if it is worth the risk.

What use is oil extraction here?

Written By: - Date published: 9:10 am, March 20th, 2014 - 26 comments

One of the more irritating traits of National politicians is their bone-headed and short-term obsession about being rentiers selling raw and lightly processed raw materials offshore. Sure it is great in the short-term for the seller of the rights to those raw materials, but it does little to nothing for the other 4+ million people […]

NZ independence? back to the future

Written By: - Date published: 10:50 am, March 4th, 2014 - 150 comments

NZ seems like a client state of both US imperialism, and the UK monarchy: a throwback to the first part of the 20th century. John Key was quick to support the US & EU lines on the Crimea; some low achieving, British royals are visiting NZ at taxpayers’ expense.

LB: Greens’ Solar Sense and National’s Nonsense

Written By: - Date published: 4:00 pm, February 18th, 2014 - 28 comments

Local Bodies looks at some (very cool) solar installations and the Greens solar policy. We are now seeing a stark contrast between a Government desperate to support the status quo of increasing charges and large company profits, while the future focussed Greens are truly progressive in their thinking.

Geoff Bertram on single-buyer for electricity

Written By: - Date published: 12:21 pm, February 6th, 2014 - 30 comments

Economist Dr Geoff Bertram will analyse prospects for the single-buyer model for electricity on Tuesday 11 February in Wellington. Bertram has come under personal attack from  the Electricity Authority for his analysis of price rises for power consumers. Fairfax analyst Chalkie calls the Authority’s report a “clever fallacious and deceptive.. politically led effort  to discredit the Labour/Green single buyer policy.” Extraordinary. All welcome – register with the Fabians.

State of Nations

Written By: - Date published: 6:11 pm, January 29th, 2014 - 25 comments

This post isn’t a ‘contrast and compare’ piece on the policy announcements of National, the Greens and Labour. Enough to say that National are pursuing privatisation while both Labour and Green are at least trying to do good things.

Shame about the reality of the bigger picture then.

Deep sea oil drilling

Written By: - Date published: 9:34 am, January 23rd, 2014 - 91 comments

Deep sea oil drilling is in the news.  Labour’s position is to require increased environmental standards and drillers would have to display an effective ability to clean up any disasters.  The Greens would prefer to leave the oil in the ground.  If there is a change of Government this year resolving this issue will pose a fascinating test of the parties.

Local Bodies: Shell and the Great South Basin

Written By: - Date published: 12:31 pm, January 8th, 2014 - 170 comments

The Southland Times devoted the whole of the front page to celebrate Shell’s decision to do some exploratory drilling in the Great South Basin. The best scenario will be that they discover a sizable gas field similar to the one in Taranaki. Then royalties we will get are only 5% of the value of what is sold, almost 40% less than the OECD average AND we will have to pay full commercial rates to have any of it ourselves. The worst case scenario…. Well that is really bad and has no effective cover

NRT: What happens if anything goes wrong?

Written By: - Date published: 9:36 am, December 18th, 2013 - 30 comments

No Right Turn looks at some of the past history of the company that this government trusts to deepsea drill at 1500 metres off the coast of Raglan.

They are cowboys who have a history of deliberately avoiding cleaning up their messes.

Greenpeace v Simon Bridges

Written By: - Date published: 6:57 pm, November 20th, 2013 - 106 comments

The Greenpeace Yacht Vega has set up camp in the area that Andarko wants to drill for deep sea oil.  The recent law changes designed by Simon Bridges was meant to cover all possible loopholes.  But has he left one open?

Oil rigs – coming to a beach near you?

Written By: - Date published: 7:58 am, November 19th, 2013 - 98 comments

The Government is in the process of handing out oil exploration permits which would if unchanged allow drilling 6 nautical miles out from the west coast beaches of Auckland.  And Auckland Council had the chance to submit on the proposal and did so, in a very gentle way, but forgot to ask the locals including the local board.  There has to be a better way.

Nats’ demolition derby

Written By: - Date published: 5:20 pm, November 18th, 2013 - 107 comments

John Key’s government is going full tilt at dismantling everything of value in NZ, and selling as much as possible to the overseas investors.  It’s the government of Drill It, Mine it, Sell it.  Find out about the asset sales referendum & how to vote.

Where did Mighty River get that spare $50m?

Written By: - Date published: 7:57 am, October 16th, 2013 - 44 comments

So, Mighty River Power has so much spare cash at the moment that it just doesn’t know what to do with it. Rather than pay out a special dividend, they’re going to buy back some shares. This, naturally, has raised eyebrows because these shares were only just sold to ‘mum and dad’. But the bigger question is: where did Mighty River get a spare $50m in the first place?

APEC, TPP, Crosby-Textor, Philip Morris & John Key

Written By: - Date published: 10:33 am, October 8th, 2013 - 76 comments

John Key’s role as Obama surrogate in chairing TPP discussions at APEC just reinforce how much Key is deeply involved in crony capitalist, Big Corporate serving networks of influence: ones that link him with anti-democratic Big Tobacco, Big Oil, and climate change denial propaganda.

Simon Bridges caught fibbing again

Written By: - Date published: 6:57 am, October 3rd, 2013 - 15 comments

Simon Bridges has been keeping a low profile lately but he’s in the news again today, and onceagain he’s been caught being somewhat less than honest.

It turns out he’s been caught trying to bury a report showing a huge quarterly jump in electricity prices.

Your Brighter Future: Burn.

Written By: - Date published: 1:13 pm, October 2nd, 2013 - 15 comments

“I just utter one fear…”

Remember that?