Green and on the go with a tank full of gas

Greenpeace is doing a victory lap around New Zealand ports with its flagship vessel Rainbow Warrior III, celebrating the banning of offshore exploration.

The strange irony is, below the deck it carries up to 90 tonnes of diesel to fuel the 1850 horsepower Volvo Penta engine.

The diesel engine is used as a backup to drive an electric motor when the wind isn’t strong enough to fill its sails.

If Greenpeace took their blinkers off, they’d see that firing up the high-emission Volvo Penta when the wind drops off, is no different to firing up a loweremission gas peaker power station when the wind drops off.

They want to keep their vessel safe, we want to keep our homes and businesses running.

I’m not sure why they think they can, but we can’t?

In June, we saw some of the highest power prices this year.

Diesel powered generation was a big part of it.

Looking at our region alone, the Central North Island, at one-point wholesale electricity prices hit 20 times the average price!

In the last three days of June, the wholesale price hit over $800 a MWh four times.

At that time hydro storage was low, and the hydro generators were required (for system security), to raise their prices if they believed that water will become scarce in the future.

Higher prices encourage thermal plants to enter the market to bolster supply and prevent any shortage.

Concurrent to this, Stratford’s two gas peaker power stations were offline for maintenance.

So, the Whirinaki diesel-fired power plant steps in to plug the gap.

It is the highest cost generator in the country and one of the reasons why prices got so high in June.

You might ask why didn’t we use more hydro, wind or solar instead of relying on diesel?

The answer was simple – there wasn’t enough!

This is a lesson to all who think we should just be rid of all thermal generation and be done with it.

Back to the Rainbow Warrior’s victory lap; while Russel Norman, chief executive of Greenpeace, is celebrating the end of gas, we’re needing to turn to high emission, high-cost diesel because we can’t get enough of it.

This is where the Government’s decision to ban offshore exploration can increase emissions.

It is a failure of rationality and ultimately, a failure of governance.

It gets murkier. Russel Norman is out telling New Zealanders that the hydrocarbon industry is the new enemy, capable of doing what the first bombers did to the first Rainbow Warrior.

A completely outrageous statement, especially as the last

Natural gas still has a crucial part to play in the security of our electricity and energy supply.

organisation that acted unlawfully towards ships in New Zealand waters was his.

From the people I know in the oil and gas sector in Taranaki, they are hard-working, law-abiding citizens who contribute very positively to Taranaki’s and New Zealand’s economic success.

They are our families, friends and neighbours.

I’m all for new forms of energy – I’m a Trekkie from way back so one day we might travel the universe powered by warp drives or spore drives!

Or for those Back to the Future fans who desperately want the flux-capacitor to be true, time may no longer be a barrier to future generations, but in the meantime, we live in the real world not a fictional one.

We are dealing with communities that need energy for health, wellbeing, food and finance.

Natural gas still has a crucial part to play in the security of our electricity and energy supply, especially new-generation gas plants which are being prototyped with full carbon capture technologies.

I’m open to what the future will unfold.

Innovative ideas are delivering exciting options for us.

However, most new technologies aren’t yet capable enough or affordable enough to run the entire country.

One day they may well be, but in the meantime, relax Russel!