10 March 2009

The Hon. Gerry Brownlee,
Minister of Energy,
Parliament Buildings,
Wellington.

Dear Mr. Brownlee,

I write to continue correspondence I have had with successive ministers of energy over the last seven years. I have been critical of New Zealand's energy policies, though until recently it was evident that New Zealand didn't actually have an energy policy. Concerns have included high oil consumption from excessively thirsty private vehicle fleet and over-reliance on private vehicular transport, a poor public transport network, an increasing proportion of electricity generation by fossil fuels, a lack of windpower installations, poor energy efficiency standards in private and commercial construction, lack of integrated policies to deal with climate change, poor urban planning etc.

Although the previous Labour administration was very laggardly in getting to grips with these matters, four policies in particular did eventually make it through for further action. This included a ban on new electricity generation by other than renewable sources, and a much improved energy efficiency standards for new construction, a $1 billion expenditure over fifteen years to retrofit insulation to existing housing stock and action on the Kyoto protocol to try and reduce New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions.

So it was extremely disappointing that even before your administration had three months in office, three of these policies have been postponed or abandoned, and the other, the new construction regulations, are likely to be watered down because of issues with 'compliance costs'

Home insulation

I have been practising medicine in New Zealand for over twenty years, and I am constantly reminded of the high respiratory, ear and skin infection problems in New Zealand, including asthma, and of more serious disorders, such as rheumatic fever. Our rates of rheumatic fever, a childhood infection that can cause long term and serious medical health problems, are by comparison with other advanced OECD nations very high, and it is known that this illness thrives in overcrowded, damp and cold houses. Our rates of rheumatic fever are not seen in other than third world countries and are a national disgrace, which successive governments have tolerated for far too long and should be thoroughly ashamed of. It is widely recognised that large numbers of New Zealand houses are inadequately heated in winter, failing to reach by some margin WHO standards for indoor temperatures for the good health of their occupants. It is estimated at least 500,000 homes in New Zealand have no insulation or very inadequate insulation. This has been known for years, and represents a major public health issue. In addition of course the energy efficiency of such homes is poor, causing supply problems for electricity producers, and increase expenses for the occupants, over and above the large increases in electricity prices for home consumers since Mr. Bradford's disastrous electricity reforms. Our nation's inability to use its energy wisely, and to provide comfortable and healthy living conditions for our citizens by ensuring everyone's home is properly insulated is a long running and embarrassing political and economic deficit in New Zealand.

This insulation package came about after years of campaigning by the Green Party, and a lot of personal input from Jeanette Fitzsimons. It is frankly amazing that such an obviously needed and long-delayed measure should need this amount of effort to come to pass. It is even more amazing that one of the first things your government does is to cancel most of this programme. You know only too well as energy minister of the problems all societies are experiencing with energy availability. Peak oil, high electricity prices, dry years, and environmental concerns etc. are all pressures that will only get worse during the first few decades of this century. To fail to support this insulation programme is, frankly, absurd, and it is highly revealing of this National government's ambivalent position on environmental and energy matters. It is even more absurd with your administration desperately looking for measures to keep people employed; it would be difficult to conceive of a better programme to employ lots of laid off building workers, with an excellent rate of return in health and energy efficiency, as a programme to insulate the entire housing stock to more effective standards.

So having promised to cancel this programme, I see from your speech that you have partially changed your mind and that you have tasked the Ministry of Economic Development and EECA with designing a plan to significantly boost the number of home insulation retrofits occurring in private homes. Why not more simply accept all the work that has been done already? I understand that one of your criticisms is that this hasn't been costed or funded. I would take issue with this, as we know it has been costed and this programme was to take fifteen years. In fact the approximate costs are extremely easy to calculate. My own estimate of basic retrofitting, which would include effective draught-proofing, roof and floor insulation is $2500 per home, which is very similar to the Nelson Healthier Homes project estimate of $2200 (http://www.nelsonhousing.org.nz/healthier-homes.htm) Accepting a figure of $2500 and 500,000 homes equals $1.25 billion. Your estimate of the number of homes is 850,000 so the cost would be $2.125 billion. Double glazing and wall insulation would increase this figure further. I see no reason for referring this matter back to the Ministry of Economic Development, it should be within your competence to work all this out for yourself in a few minutes on the back of an envelope. All that is required is the imagination to see that decades of failure of investment in the most important infrastructure of all, i.e. the citizens' homes, is no longer an option. Just get on with it and stop prevaricating.

Kyoto

In regard to New Zealand's Kyoto commitments your returning this matter for a select committee to consider, and in particular with an enquiry as to the scientific basis of global warming, is preposterous, it is difficult to overstate how ridiculous this makes your administration look. I know you're only doing this to please Mr. Rodney Hide and the ACT (the Atmosphere Can Take it) party, but you're doing your own party no favours at all by co-operating with this charade and again this reveals the seriously distorted and inadequate understanding of the issue by the National administration, otherwise you would not have had a bar of it. The scientific basis of global warming is well established, is accepted by every leading science institution in the world, including the Royal Society and NIWA here in New Zealand. Do you seriously consider for one minute that such an examination in Parliament will do anything but confirm the seriousness and immediacy of global warming, or is it actually considered possible that this committee would arrive at a conclusion that global warming is not an issue and that all the world's atmospheric scientists are mistaken? If this were to be the case, then I would suggest the proof is written up in a peer reviewed prestigious science journal, such as Nature, and Rodney Hide put himself forward for a Nobel Prize. As I write this, I find myself in sheer disbelief of the effrontery of this proposal, it's truly bizarre.

Ban on new fossil fuels plants

I also mention your removal of the previous Labour government's ban on new power generation other than by renewable energy. This was one of the few sensible things Labour did in energy matters when it was in office. New Zealand, as you yourself have admitted, has a wonderful renewable energy resource, so why would we need to consider installing further fossil fuel generation? I note too in your speech to the National Power Conference on the 24th February 2009, that you said this ban was a "piece of political symbolism". I disagree, it was a practical and simple measure to get New Zealand into the 21st Century and to try and get some action on reducing our CO2 emissions, which you know have increased by 28% since 1990, one of the worse figures in the OECD. So not only are we manifestly failing our Kyoto commitments, the first thing that your administration have done is to introduce policies that will make this commitment even more difficult. If there was any symbolism at all, it might have been that New Zealand wasn't going to renege of its responsibilities to this planet and our descendants; I would suggest that your action is equally symbolic, this time of a government that doesn't actually care very much about the planet or our descendants' place in it.

You go on to say that "the Government wants investment in new electricity generation to occur on the basis of sound economics, rather than through ruling out particular options on the basis of ideology." Mr. Brownlee, what exactly is that ideology? Do you mean our need to reduce greenhouse gases and trying to preserve an equable climate? Mr.Brownlee, what is your sound economics? Is that the economics of we'll do what we have to to preserve our wealth, and to hell with the climate, to hell with our children, to hell with everyone else? It sounds suspiciously like this to me.

The energy strategy

Further on, you take the previous Labour government's energy strategy to task, for stressing sustainability, greenhouse gases and climate change rather more than security of supply. Of course security of supply is important, that's why an insulation scheme and proper regard for energy efficiency might help, which you seem to treat so cavalierly. This is probably the most important part of your speech, because it emphasises the fundamental philosophical direction of your new energy strategy:

The current Energy Strategy represents the high point of the total subsuming of energy policy into climate change policy. The whole Strategy is an idealistic vision document for carbon neutrality. You need only read the foreword of the NZES to get a sense of this. "Sustainability" and "sustainable" are mentioned thirteen times, "greenhouse gas" is mentioned four times, and "climate change" is mentioned three times. That is all very good, but security of supply rates only one mention. Affordability is not touched on at all. Nor is economic growth. The National-led Government believes a refocusing of the Energy Strategy is required. The new strategy will focus on security of supply, affordability, and environmental responsibility, with the overriding goal of maximising economic growth.

Your last point says it all really - you are fundamentally reversing a forward looking and ethical energy strategy that emphasises our environmental and social responsibilities, to an energy strategy which pays lip service to these responsibilities, and subsumes them all to the goal of maximising growth.

The dogma of growth

I know, Mr Brownlee, that you and I are going to disagree fundamentally here, because I would contend it is this single point, the overriding goal for maximising economic growth that is the most logically absurd and ethically deficient part of your argument. Mr Brownlee, have you not read the UN Millennium Ecosystems Assessment, (http://www.millenniumassessment.org/en/index.aspx) with its summary? The assessment is alternatively entitled Living Beyond our Means, which says it all really:

"At the heart of this report is a stark warning.  Human activity is putting such strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted."

This report continues:

"As human demands increase in coming decades, these systems will face even greater pressures ­ and the risk of further weakening the natural infrastructure on which all societies depend." Š "Protecting and improving our future well-being requires wiser and less destructive use of natural assets.  This in turn involves major changes in the way we make and implement decisions. Above all, protection of these assets can no longer be seen as an optional extra , to be considered once more pressing concerns such as wealth creation or national security have been dealt with." (My bold type.)

Obviously you haven't read it, or have conveniently forgotten it if you have, as your policy of stressing growth above all other considerations is directly counter to what is now required of any ethical and sustainable economic and political philosophy. Your philosophy is that of last century, and fails to recognise the revolutionary changes now taking place and that will manifest themselves ever more urgently in the first half of this new century.

Have you ever watched Prof. Albert Bartlett's lecture on growth, and his lecture on 'Arithmetic, population and energy' in which he states the "Greatest failing of mankind is its inability to understand the exponential function". You can find the lecture here http://globalpublicmedia.com/lectures/461 . Prof. Bartlett illustrates with piercing simplicity the folly of seeking continued steady growth, over modest periods of time, in a finite environment.

Your own figures for the continued need for 150 to 200 MW of new generating capacity per annum illustrate this perfectly. Our total generating capacity is a little over 9 GW, call it 10 GW. The increase in power generation therefore amounts to 1.5 - 2% p.a. As you will know a continued increase of this level means a doubling of our electricity output within about 40-45 years. I would like to know how long you consider that we will need to increase our electricity output by this amount, exactly how we will accommodate a doubling of our electricity output in 40 years, and how you propose to either meet this by renewable energy or if we continue to burn fossil fuels, which you enthusiastically endorse, how we are going to reduce our CO2 emissions to the small fraction of our present emissions needed to avoid catastrophic climate change?

Nothing illustrates better the futility of our growth predicated economy, the one you are so enthusiastic about, than working out what this truly means in needed resources. You will know the difficulties and expense of constructing, over the last one hundred years, the totality of our generation capacity. This includes the Waitaki dams, the Waikato dams, Manapouri, Clyde, the Wairaki geothermal plant, and the Huntly fossil-fuelled stations, and many others. At present rates of increase in electricity generation needs, the one's you quote, and seem quite happy to accommodate, means that in the next 40-45 years we will have to construct every single one of these facilities again. David Parker remarked last year, in regard to the proposed dam on the Mokihinui river, that approving this proposal do not mean that we would be needing to dam every river or build a wind power facility on every ridge line. But David Parker was wrong, to construct that amount of power from renewable resources, the only sustainable and ethical response to global warming, we will need a dam on every river, a wind powered generation facility on every ridge.

At some future time, even you, Mr. Brownlee, are going to have to question the wisdom or perpetual economic growth, though I suspect it will only come to truly register with you when it is proposed to build a nuclear facility or reprocessing plant, preferably somewhere near where you live - with luck you'll be able to see it from your front window, and it will lie just to the west of your home, so the wind can blow any radioactive particles your way. Of course, New Zealand presently doesn't need nuclear power, but if we need twice as much power as we have now, it may be unavoidable. I suggest it is your duty, as such a vocal proponent of economic growth, to welcome such a facility on your doorstep, otherwise this enthusiasm for ever more electricity generation capacity smacks just a little of hypocrisy.

The RMA

Your speech also rounds on the present RMA, which National is very keen to emasculate, proving another victory for economic growth and an also-ran for our environment. You blame the present RMA for the failure to invest in new energy infrastructure. One of the failures was a proposed coal-fired power station in Northland - obviously a severe blow to someone like you, with your enthusiasm for the "billions" of tonnes of coal that we might burn some day, but to me, and most people thinking of our future as more than an opportunity to make money, but as something rather precious to us, and even more so for our children, as exactly the sort of result that the RMA should have delivered. You won't of course admit this, but many people would be rather more convinced that the failures of the electricity reforms brought in by a previous National administration are rather more likely to be the culprit. It has paid the private electricity companies and the government owned ones handsomely to ensure that electricity supplies run at the margin, and the profits that high spot prices bring are a wonderful reward for this policy. The RMA has very little to do with this matter, but it's a convenient excuse for the your particular brand of economic dogma that says any interference with our industrial sector, and here I include farming, is to be reduced to the minimum, and that ordinary people's right to oppose such development is to be undermined.

Environmental responsibility

Your then go on to say about environmental responsibility: "The Government knows that New Zealand must balance its energy needs with its environmental responsibilities. We are very conscious that energy contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and our Kyoto liability." And that's it. The whole strategy of environmental responsibility ultra-distilled to two sentences and three lines - and even worse, lines that mean absolutely nothing.

Take the second sentence first in which you say that you are conscious that energy contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and our Kyoto liability. Well this is obviously not true. Some energy does, petrol, oil, gas and coal, but lots of energy, particularly in New Zealand, doesn't, such as hydro, geothermal and wind. OK, so you forgot about them, an easy oversight for an energy minister. And you're conscious of our Kyoto liabilities - well, that's brilliant, so is everyone else. What is more important, Mr. Brownlee, is what you're going to do about them? Your subsequent paragraph about the ETS gives no confidence that your commitment to Kyoto and reducing CO2 emissions is other than the most superficial. You have come into government with no firm proposals on this matter, despite seven years of opposition to fine tune your policies, and you have delayed this urgent matter even further by referring back to a select committee, the absurdity of which I have already pointed out.

The first sentence though is the classic of all such people as you, the vast majority of politicians, business people, economists and most ordinary folk - that you must balance energy needs (or whatever economic activity one happens to be defending) with your environmental responsibilities. Basically what you are saying is that you must balance environmental responsibilities (or more accurately, its perceived costs) against economic gain (or more accurately, money). This trite phrase is trotted out every time when those not concerned for the environment, or careless of it, try to justify their neglect, by appealing to voters' pockets, or greed or however you care to put it. What you don't understand, Mr. Brownlee, is that there is no set of balances, nor could any ever be contrived, that can simultaneously balance our environment against our economic gain. The problem is, Mr. Brownlee, that our economy is wholly owned subsidiary of our environment, not one microscopic fraction of our economy exists outside of this reality. This call to balance our economy against the environment can only be made by people living in another plane of existence, where the universe outside never intrudes and which lies outside the reality of our true existence as a moderately advanced primate living on a bountiful, but finite planet. It is impossible to weigh the economy vs. the environment as they will always be on the same side of the scales.

Mr. Brownlee, if this is a bit too complicated for you, let me draw you a diagram. I have printed it separately on another page. It is self-explanatory.



So this call for "balance" is a logical and physical nonsense. Caring for the economy is basically meaningless on its own, whereas caring for environment must, by logic, be caring for the economy. The healthier our environment, the healthier our economy. Our economy might seem to thrive for a short while if we disregard this injunction, living on the accumulated capital of the environment, but ultimately, and at our present rate of use of this capital, within the next twenty to thirty years, a failing environment will severely damage or kill our economy, and us. Indeed at the end of 2007 with soaring prices for oil, gas, coal, steel, copper, zinc, chromium. lead, concrete and indeed all the vital raw materials for our global economy we saw for a brief moment what a resource constrained world looked like. It was this that brought down our economy, not crooked bankers or sub-prime mortgages. This is the world that will become our norm, or your children's norm.

But Mr Brownlee, as I have already indicated, in this matter you are not unique, indeed by far the majority of your colleagues and associates, and the vast majority of humanity think like you. You may take comfort from this but the planet certainly won't. For further thoughts on this matter, you could make a start by reading Thomas L. Friedman's opinion piece in the New York Times today. Thomas Friedman is no left wing, tree-hugging, cardigan wearing greeny, but a right wing economic and political commentator, staunch supporter of Israel and the Iraq war. More recently he has become environmentally aware, and this is reflected in his book Hot, Flat and Crowded. This is part of what he says in the New York Times ( http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/opinion/08friedman.html?em ):

Let's today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it's telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall ‹ when Mother Nature and the market both said: "No more."

This realisation my have come rather late to Mr. Friedman, but better late than never. When will this realisation come to you, Mr. Brownlee?

Future currents

You will know that the previous Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Dr Morgan Williams, published a document called Future Currents, which spells out in really simple terms the choices we now face at this critical time in human history, and which seems to have provided the impetus to the Energy Strategy of the last Labour administration. Dr. Williams simplified matters into starkly different scenarios, or choices, one he called Fuelling the Future and the other Sparking New Designs. The former would be a continuation of our present way of doing things, mainly looking the generation side of the equation, not caring too much about our environment and seeing continued massive growth of generation capacity by 2050. He predicted that Fuelling the Future would mean an extra 135% of electricity use, whereas the Sparking New Designs, which would make more intelligent use of the resources we already have, would look to renewables to power the future, and would care for the environment, would see an extra 13% electricity use. In the face of these scenarios, and the obviousness of the choice needed, it takes a stubborn resolve and a real determination to stick to the outmoded and anachronistic to take the Fuelling the Future scenario, yet this is obviously the route you are determined to follow. You have to wonder why Dr Morgan Williams bothered.
(http://www.pce.govt.nz/work_programme/reports_by_subject/all_reports/energy__and__climate/future_currents )

Distributed generation and solar power

Distributed generation is not mentioned in your speech at all, nor is solar power. Solar power, as an equal cost solution to our power generation needs, is not presently available, but solar power as adjunct to our electricity needs is available, and will become increasingly so over the next few years. New Zealand's solar resources are quite reasonable, passive solar hot water heating certainly is, and solar power generation is something that we should be starting to invest in now. Today, when this matter was raised, you replied that distributed generation was not something that people would buy into. (I am sorry I can't find your exact quote.) What is your evidence for this assertion? It seems to be purely a personal opinion. Distributed solar power, and some wind power, has a good potential to increase renewable energy generation in New Zealand. At any rate, there are many thousands of people in New Zealand who would be keen to make a start in this matter. What they would be particularly need to see is the ability to feed power directly back to the grid when it isn't needed at home. This will require regulation, so that electricity companies are compelled to provide for this. In addition, it would be reasonable so as to encourage solar power generation, to pay back money for the power at a rate commensurate with the cost of providing it, as in the feed in tariff system in Germany. As more households took advantage of this, the price could be lowered so that the total cost doesn't become too burdensome.

What I think you don't appreciate, Mr. Brownlee, is that there are in this country many people who actually have a concern for our environment and our future and, in order to contribute to this future, would be prepared to make quite a considerable investment. Because you could never conceive of doing this yourself, you have made the mistaken assumption no-one else would. In addition, weren't we supposed to have a free electricity market in New Zealand, so shouldn't you be supporting such endeavours, rather than hindering them? I suspect you wish to allow the electricity companies to continue to make lots of money so that you can get a higher price when you privatise the remaining large government owned electricity generators. It is likely that by 2020 that solar power will become competitive with electricity grid prices in many markets, and likely including New Zealand. This being so, at least an appraisal programme should be financed, and encouragement of this silent, nearly non-polluting power source should be forthcoming. Your outright refusal to even countenance this doesn't surprise me, but Mr.Brownlee, 2020 is only eleven years away, a modern progressive nation can't afford to keep its economy going on last century's technology. http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/ccsi/pdf/economics_of_solar.pdf

Biodiesel

Your point about biodiesel and its unequal treatment as compared with biothenol is somewhat ingenuous, because that is the "fault" of the present taxation system, and not related to any specific targeting of biodiesel. The biofuels legislation is in its infancy, there are bound to be some early distortions, but by cancelling what was a very modest, but environmentally ethical and praiseworthy proposal, you have thrown the biofuels baby out with the bathwater.

Lignite

Your enthusiasm for New Zealand's lignite reserves is also anachronistic and environmentally tragic. You will know that some of the worst polluted areas of Europe are in the "Black Triangle" of northern Germany and Poland, where brown coal is used on massive scale to power local industry. It is a major cause of global warming, it causes acid rain, it destroys local areas with huge strip mines, indeed it is basically an environmental disaster. Lignite is another name for this poor quality fossil fuel, and you are proposing to strip mine large areas of Southland for this appallingly damaging resource. You pretend to know something about carbon capture and storage, such a process if it ever came to fruition may allow the burning of coal and storing the CO2. However you must know that no commercially successful operation has been built. Similar such schemes exist, but most make use of CO2 contained in natural gas, one larger scheme captures CO2 from a coal gasification plant. There is not a single power station yet that has demonstrated CC&S in a commercially feasible manner anywhere in the world, even including much more favourable sites than Southland, though it is true there are a number of experimental sites. And even if the technical hurdles were to be overcome, that doesn't solve matters like large open-strip mines, mercury discharges or ash. Coal mining and use in energy generation will never be anything other than dirty and environmentally degrading. Any widespread use of coal and New Zealand will be able to kiss its 'clean, green' image good-bye, with major repercussions for our export and tourism industries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage

Also, you are suggesting that this process might be applicable to lignite fuel, this is a very dubious assertion; lignite fuels are much poorer quality than ordinary bituminous coals, and there is no guarantee at all even supposing the massively difficult problems of coal sequestration were to be solved, say in the USA, that the same process could be applied to our lignite coals, in our particular situation at a price that could compete, for instance, with our wonderful wind resources. In fact I think it is extremely unlikely as wind power in New Zealand is already nearly cost competitive with fossil fuel power. For New Zealand you are looking forward to a solution to a problem that shouldn't need to exist.

What is fascinating about your enthusiasm for carbon sequestration is how illuminating it is of your thought processes ­ that you can be excited by non-existent, dirty, environmentally disruptive and highly doubtful future technology, but that solar power, which is non polluting, non invasive, quiet, sustainable, actually exists and is definitely very exciting, you don't even mention! A canal builder of early nineteenth century England could hardly have been more out of touch with the reality of his near future than you are of yours.

Revolutionary times

Mr. Brownlee, we live in revolutionary times. All the mistaken but generally accepted assumptions made about growth, and the globalised and free market economy, are likely now to come under increasing scrutiny, and indeed what is happening in regard to this present economic crash is bringing more and more people to question these assumptions. In the future, historians will look back to this time and see the temporary success of such policies as being a very aberrant time in human history. The basic underpinning of our global economy has been a wonderfully useful, cheap and abundant source of energy, oil. We are now at peak oil, it was this that pricked the bubble of our global economy, and before long oil production will fall off the peak and decline inexorably, with prices soaring to higher levels than they did last year. Fundamentally our present economic crisis is an environmental one. We have been living off the planet's capital for a long time, and the rate of depletion of this capital is now occurring as the Club of Rome predicted, and as confirmed by an article in the New Scientist, (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026833.000-forecast-of-economic-collapse-backed-by-data.html )which states:

We are on track for serious economic collapse that will dwarf our current troubles. That's the conclusion of the real-world analysis of a controversial prediction made 30 years ago that economic growth cannot be sustained..

At times of such massive structural change in our society, men or women of vision are very much needed, but so few in number. The last thing any society needs are men and women stuck in the old way, the 'Ancien Régime', determined to stick to the outdated whatever happens, however increasingly reality forces itself upon their consciousness. I am sorry to see that you number among them. You've had only a few short months in office and the one major speech, yet instead of lighting up the beacon of progress and sustainability, you've already shackled yourself to the anchor-chain of inertia. Worse than this you have failed your constituents and their children and, as our environmental practices impact on the rest of the world, every one else's children too. As I have observed previously, we should certainly be concerned about peak oil, but perhaps we should be even more concerned about peak folly.

Yours faithfully,

Dr John K. Monro, General Practitioner.