Transport fuels in New Zealand after Maui: lignite on the back burner

Abstract

The greenhouse effect is perhaps the major global environmental issue we face at the end of the twentieth century. It is a peculiarly intractable problem for various reasons. Scientific opinion is divided so policy makers must learn to react to probabilities, not hard evidence. Further, the causes of the problem are not peripheral to lifestyle; the gases that threaten humankind are not propellants in hairspray cans, but byproducts of virtually all our economic activity. In common with many other countries, New Zealand has put some initial effort into developing a greenhouse policy. The Ministry for the Environment has established a Climate Change Programme consisting of working groups, produced discussion documents and commissioned various research projects. This publication is the outcome of one small research project. A greenhouse policy "with teeth" must include targets for emission of greenhouse gases. For instance, the Norwegian Government has set a target of 50% reduction in 1980 CO2 emission levels by 1993 (Bye et aI., 1989, p.32). Both in setting such ends and in devising the means by which to achieve these ends, it is essential to consider future likely sources of greenhouse gases as well to analyse present sources. Because of our concern that inadequate consideration of future production of greenhouse gases would jeopardise any greenhouse target, the authors recently completed, (with another researcher), a report drawing attention to the scale of potential CO2 emissions from thermal generation of electricity (Wright et aI., 1990). In this publication, we have taken one of the greenhouse problems out of the "too hard" basket, namely, CO2 emissions from transport fuels. Our intent is to highlight one largely ignored aspect of this in order to bring it into the climate change debate. After the oil shocks of the early 70s, a great deal of attention was focused on the transport sector. A large amount of research aimed at decreasing national dependence on imported oil was funded in a "wartime atmosphere". Towards the end of that time of intense research activity, one indigenous source of transport fuel, lignite, emerged as the preferred option. We begin this report with the hypothesis that lignite might well be the default response to another oil crisis; certainly there is a wealth of information on this option waiting to be used.