Guest Post: Leyland on climate change
A guest post from Bryan Leyland:
The West Coast District Council has asked the government to provide evidence that demonstrates that the policies claimed to reduce New Zealand’s emissions of carbon dioxide and agricultural methane are justified.
They are right to do so.
Recently, the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition formally asked the Royal Society of New Zealand to provide evidence based on observational data that man-made greenhouse gases cause dangerous global warming. They were unable to do so. We persuaded them to consult Prof James Renwick who was also unable to provide the evidence. All they did was refer us to the IPCC reports. Scientists with the Climate Conversation Group are reviewing the latest IPCC report for convincing evidence of dangerous man-made global warming. They hope to announce their results in the near future.
Careful scrutiny of the reports found many statements that were not supported in the technical reports and revealed several references to the fact that there were major uncertainties in many of the critical factors fed into the computer models that, alone, predict dangerous global warming. None of these models have been validated, and none has made an accurate prediction. Over the last three years, world temperatures have dropped by 0.3° and, according to the satellites, are the same as they were in 2002.
If man-made global warming is found to be real and dangerous, the government’s “carbon zero” policies will fail dismally unless they result in a reduction in worldwide emissions at a reasonable cost. A close examination of these policies indicates that they will lead to an increase in worldwide emissions, higher electricity prices and do serious damage to many of our efficient and productive industries.
The ban on future gas and oil exploration has paralysed the industry and is likely to mean that we will have to start importing gas and increased imports of oil and coal will be needed to make up for the gas shortfall and to keep the lights on in a dry year. This will result in higher costs and increased emissions. Higher gas prices will lead to a major increase in electricity prices such as we have seen over the last four months, when problems with gas supply more than doubled wholesale electricity prices. Continuing gas supply constraints indicate that the high prices will continue for several months.
The most critical factor in power supply in New Zealand is keeping the lights on in a dry year when hydropower energy generation drops by 10% of total demand. Transpower has already warned of a high risk of dry year shortages. To mitigate the dry year risk Huntly needs to have 1 million tons of coal on its stockpile as a national insurance policy. This will only happen if Genesis is compensated for the annual cost of maintaining the stockpile. The embargo on gas exploration rules out gas storage at Ahuroa even though it could provide the dry year reserve with less emissions.
Increasing the tax on CO2 emissions will further increase the cost of power from Huntly. Whenever it is burning coal it is likely to be the most expensive generator and this will jack up the wholesale price that is paid to every generator. Hydro and other generators will reap windfall profits. Every dollar paid in CO2 tax by Huntly will provide something like $10 in windfall profits. Even Genesis will be better off because it also owns hydro power stations. So the perverse result will be that consumers will pay a lot more for electricity and the generators will have a financial incentive to make sure that Huntly continues to burn coal!
The policy on agricultural emissions does not make sense. There is considerable debate worldwide on whether or not methane is a significant greenhouse gas. Some estimates say that it has about 80 times the effect of the same weight of CO2, NIWA says 25, others say that it is only 6 and some are sure it has no effect. If it the effect is small, it is not worth bothering about because methane emissions are much smaller than those of carbon dioxide. This must be resolved before any action is taken.
If, as the Green Party hopes, government actions constrains dairy production to reduce methane emissions the shortfall will be made up by less efficient and more expensive production overseas. So the net effect will be an increase in worldwide emissions.
Wind and solar will do little to mitigate CO2. The records show that wind power is least during the critical autumn and early winter period and solar power is least in the wintertime. If the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine for several days we will be burning more coal and gas and could easily have massive blackouts. Wind and solar can only make a useful contribution if, for instance, we spent something like $3 – $5 billion on the pumped storage facility that has been identified in the South Island. This is likely to meet strong opposition from the Green Party and getting it through the Resource Management Act would be a nightmare. Maintaining a million tonne coal stockpile would do the same job for about 10% of the cost and without an unacceptable 10 year time delay.
Policies encouraging electric cars are likely to have little effect because most of the power they need will come from increased generation at gas and coal fired stations. Also, battery manufacture causes significant emissions of CO2 that take years to recover.
If the government really wanted to reduce emissions from power generation, it would be seriously considering nuclear power generation. Small modular nuclear reactors that are inherently safe and produce cheap and reliable power will soon be available. Worldwide, 170,000 MW of nuclear generation is under construction or proposed.
Bearing in mind the tiny effect New Zealand can have on global emissions and the huge uncertainties surrounding almost every aspect of “climate change”, any rational government would concentrate on policies that would reduce worldwide emissions in a cost effective manner.
Bryan Leyland MSc, DistFEngNZ, FIMechE, FIEE(rtd), MRSNZ, is an electrical engineer with 60 years experience worldwide in electricity generation, transmission and distribution. He and his wife are majority owners of a small hydro power station.