Greenpeace protests coal imports for electricity generation

3.00pm

Greenpeace activists said today they boarded a coal ship arriving at Port Tauranga to attract public attention to the climate change debate.

The 187m ship Almar was carrying the first imports of coal for Genesis' Huntly power station, to provide extra electricity this winter.

Greenpeace climbers hung a banner off the side which read "Coal Cooks the Climate" and floated a line of 10 large windmills alongside the ship to symbolise an alternative source of energy.

Greenpeace is calling for the Government to redirect New Zealand's energy system away from fossil fuels and to develop an energy strategy for 100 per cent renewable energy by 2020.

Earlier this month state-owned power company Genesis Energy announced it planned to import 500,000 tonnes of coal from Australia and Indonesia.

Genesis has faced criticism this winter for not ensuring it had sufficient reserves of coal on hand for the 1000 megawatt (MW) Huntly power station to make up hydro-generation shortfalls in recent months.

On June 4, Genesis chief executive Murray Jackson said Genesis was working with Ports of Tauranga, Tranz Rail and Solid Energy "on putting a facility together that would enable us to supplement local coals with South Island and Indonesian coals"

With a new contract for coal from Solid Energy and production from other local mines and imports from the South Island and Indonesia, Huntly power station would be supplied with about 2-1/2 million tonnes of coal per year and the energy equivalent of half a million tonnes of coal in gas supplies.

Mr Jackson said this represented a significant change for the 1000-megawatt station which ran on about 70 per cent gas and 30 per cent coal "a couple of years ago". Until New Zealand's electricity generator, ECNZ, was broken up, it used to prepare for winter each year by having coal beds in opencast mines uncovered, ready for extraction.

But Greenpeace climate campaigner Vanessa Atkinson said today the Government was adding to the problems of greenhouse gas emissions by planning more fossil fuels power stations as a "dry year reserve".

"Where are the policies, electricity market changes and incentives to drive renewable energy development?," she said in a steaement. "The answer certainly does not lie in this shipment of dirty old coal".

- NZPA