Gas the enabler, not the enemy, of the future
It’s hard for people in Taranaki, with our clean and clear skies to believe it’s necessary to wind down their small hydrocarbon industry to save the planet.
Seventy per cent of what is extracted from Taranaki is gas, and the remaining 30 per cent is oil, half of which doesn’t end up as a fuel at all. It is used for high density plastics, pharmaceutical products, bitumen and asphalt, clothing materials, industrial lubricants, toothpaste and a myriad of other products that fill our homes and lives. It’s hard to think they are bad.
Petroleum exploration and production in New Zealand represents 2 per cent of one-fifth of 1 per cent (.0004 per cent) of world emissions. A smidgen. An antagonist to one of my previous articles, which said New Zealand gas could be exported to coal dependent countries and contribute to the reduction of world emissions, said New Zealand’s gas volumes were so insignificant they would make no difference in reducing world emissions.
If that is the case, the inverse is also true. While we work hard and expend billions of dollars to reduce our emissions, countries like India are bringing millions of people out of poverty through coal generated electrification and will increase their emissions in doing so. Our reductions are lost in their expansion.
In the biosphere that we all share, it is important that each plays their part, but it is going to be the mega nations that will make the significant difference. That’s the inconvenient truth.
The International Energy Agency, which the New Zealand Government pays an annual levy of $150,000 to support, says gas as an energy source will increase by 40 per cent in the next 20 years, and must do so to support the growing energy demand of the planet, particularly in supporting the variableness of renewables.
They say: ‘‘The role that natural gas can play in the future of global energy is inextricably linked to its ability to help address environmental problems.
‘‘With concerns about air quality and climate change looming large, natural gas offers many potential benefits if it displaces more polluting fuels.
‘‘This is especially true given limits to how quickly renewable energy options can be scaled up. The flexibility that natural gas brings to an energy system can also make it a good fit for the rise of variable renewables such as wind and solar PV.’’
While the prime minister has said hydrocarbons are ‘‘not our future’’, I hold to the view that gas has a strategic part to play in an integrated energy system that supports variable renewables.
I wonder, without the backup that gas offers whether renewables would be so readily adopted. There will always be windless and sunless days, and days with low lake levels. Gas covers these insufficiencies and enables us to utilise them without the fear that we will suffer blackouts. Gas is our friend, not our enemy and has a very important part to play in a renewable future.
Transpower’s ‘‘Energy Futures’’ paper released this week on a sustainable energy future for 2050, sees gas as a viable part of that future because of that reason.
Their caution is that the move to renewable generation represents a concentration of risk, because substantially growing demand is being met from increasingly intermittent energy sources. Gas de-risks that move.
As West Aucklanders learned last month, most Kiwis have a zero tolerance for power cuts. Come the day when gas is gone as a result of this government’s decision, and renewables can’t deliver the electricity we need, we will burn coal. We did that last month when the Pohokura, Kupe and Maui fields couldn’t supply gas for a variety of reasons as cyclone Gita swept through Taranaki.
Huntly burnt coal to keep the lights on, and I suspect when people want light, heat and energy – it will happen again.
I present an alternate view than that of the Government. I see gas as the enabler of the future, not the enemy of the future.
It deserves encouragement not stigmatisation.
I hope ministers change their mind – so much depends on it.