No more coal for hospital
Wairau Hospital will have its coal-fuelled boilers replaced as part of a $12 billion Government infrastructure package to reduce carbon emissions.
Health Minister David Clark announced on Tuesday that Nelson Marlborough Health would receive $5m to future-proof Wairau Hospital by replacing ‘‘ageing, dirty, coal-burning boilers with modern, green alternatives’’.
The three coal-fired boilers at Wairau Hospital will be replaced with high-efficiency and sustainable alternatives which will reduce carbon emissions and operating costs.
Nelson Marlborough Health chief executive Peter Bramley welcomed the funding announcement, and said the boilers needed to be replaced with ‘‘some urgency’’.
He was unsure about what new fuel source or system would be best, and the time frame within which the boilers would be replaced.
Nelson Hospital uses a combination of coal and landfill gas for heating and electricity, while Wairau uses coal exclusively. Bramley said the amount of coal used each year was dependent on weather conditions. For the last eight years, the average amount of coal burnt annually was 1374 tonnes for Nelson and 1000 tonnes for Wairau.
Bramley said the district health board had already made progress in reducing its carbon emissions.
In 2019, the amount of steam produced from the coal-fed boiler at Nelson Hospital was reduced to 25 per cent. The rest was produced from the methane-fed boiler, which uses landfill gas.
The Government have proposed a ban on new coal-fired boilers for most uses, and the phasing out of existing boilers by 2030.
In November, Nelson GP Dr Ngaire Warner and city councillor Matt Lawrey made a submission to the DHB, asking it to end its use of coal at Nelson Hospital for energy and heating.
Warner said that as a doctor, she was concerned about the detrimental health effects that burning fossil fuels had on the community, particularly in the Nelson South airshed. The heavy metals released from burning coal were linked to health problems such as bronchitis, asthma, lung cancer, neurological diseases and heart disease.
Lawrey asked board members to ‘‘avoid the temptation’’ to put off the issue until Nelson Hospital was rebuilt, as this could be a decade away.
Bramley this week said the DHB had committed to replacing the boilers at Nelson Hospital as part of its eventual redevelopment. A three-month trial of using wood pellets instead of coal in the boilers, planned for summer, had been postponed due to ‘‘critical engineering considerations’’.
A greenhouse gas emission audit under the Certified Emissions Measurement and Reduction Scheme (CEMARS) was under way, he said.
Nelson house prices have gone up again, with the median price last year reaching $565,000.
The latest report from the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand (REINZ) found that all but two regions had an increase in their median sale price, with Nelson following the trend.
The median 2019 price in Nelson was a 7.6 per cent increase from the previous year’s $525,000, which was itself a 9.1 per cent increase on 2017’s median of $481,130.
Though house prices are steadily climbing in Nelson, they still fall short of the national median including Auckland, a record-setting $590,000.