Papers
Climate Change – New Zealand Needs To Do Better
Peter Whitmore, ESR member, discusses the state of New Zealand’s readiness for climate change, with particular reference to the continuing use of large quantities of coal at the Huntly power station. Alternatives are readily available for electricity generation.
Read MoreHigh Expectations For The Climate Commission – Will Government’s Action Push Us Fast Enough?
Save the buildings and save the climate Save the climate and save the planet. The built environment is the main cause of climate change and offers the easiest opportunities for necessary change. The only truly sustainable building is the one you do not build. The next most sustainable building is the one you do not demolish. There is no point in recycling plastic bags and milk bottles if we are going to send our living buildings off to landfill.
Read MoreTamaki Campus
The built environment is the main cause of climate change. How we build determines not only how we use, or waste, resources. It also determines how we live, work, and need to travel. Even more importantly how we build determines our ability to make moral decisions. A disempowering built environment, in which everyone lives in someone else’s architecture, becomes a prison. The door is open, but the mortgage needs to be paid. An empowering built environment would allow owner‐builders to make moral choices about their own lives. The Auckland Unitary Plan is little more than a commitment to dramatically increasing climate change in the next thirty years. A consumer society consuming diminishing resources.
Read MoreAuckland’s Transport System for a Fast-Changing World
Ross Rutherford gave his personal perspective on the planning and development of Auckland’s transport system to better equip Auckland to be a successful 21st century world city. He identified changes needed in current thinking, planning and funding to meet present and future challenges. These include making better use of the existing transport network, and better preparing Auckland for a future where fossil fuels prices reflect carbon emissions and sustainability is once again a prime objective.
Read MoreRestoration of Electric Power Supply to Faseu Village
The Registered Trust “Friends of Faseu” seeks funding support for a rural electricity project in Papua New Guinea. The project involves the repair and restoration of a small hydro electric plant and the associated electrical distribution system supplying community facilities at Faseu, a village in the mountains of the Huon Peninsula in the Morobe Province. The system commenced operation in December 2005, but suffered major damage due to flood and landslip approximately two years later.
Read MoreA New Perspective on the Importance of Methane in New Zealand’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Recent analysis shows that in the relatively short timeframe available to curb our carbon emissions, it is even more important than we thought to get on top of our methane emissions. This is not an easy message to get across in New Zealand, which relies heavily on its agricultural economy.
Read MorePumped Storage Planning – 1970s VS 2020
Pumped Storage Planning, 1970s vs 2020 By Dr Alastair Barnett Webinar 21 Oct 2020 Until the recent flurry of publicity about the Lake Onslow proposal, pumped hydropower storage had not been seriously considered in New Zealand since the 1970s. At that time the Tekapo canal was under construction to link the two main storage reservoirs (Lakes Tekapo and Pukaki) in the Upper Waitaki power development, and an obvious option was to design the canal to take pumped flow from Pukaki to Tekapo as well as gravity flow from Tekapo to Pukaki. The canal design was duly analysed, constructed and tested to have the required reverse flow capacity. Instead, the newly developed Maui gas field was utilised and the Huntly thermal power station continues in use, and the importation of coal means that our thermal emissions have actually increased. The disastrous outcomes of poor power planning have now been recognised, but the reaction seems to be one of panic, adopting the first scheme to come to mind while ignoring the alternatives, especially the final 10% of the Tekapo-Pukaki scheme.
Read MoreDesign For Additive Manufacturing
Prof Olaf Diegel of the University of Auckland, spoke to a webinar arranged by Engineers for Social Responsibility on 16 September 2020. Additibve manufacturing is popularly know as 3D printing and has been eagerly seized on by many computer users as an additional and interesting adjunct to their work.
Read MoreWhat Is Wrong With The New Zealand Electricity Market?
Dr Geoff Bertram spoke to an online meeting of Engineers for Social Responsibility on 19 August 2020. He reviewed the electricity reforms since 1986 and their effects, particularly on pricing, excess profits and anti-competitive practices. He noted the effects particularly on increasing poverty and inequality, specially child poverty and energy poverty. He suggested steps that could be taken to deal with these problems, but noted that invested interests would make implementation of any of them, very difficult to achieve.
Read MoreThe Kiwi Bottle Drive – New Zealand’s Grass Roots Campaign For The Re-Introduction of Bottle Deposits
A Container Deposit Scheme (CDS) would recycle an extra 750 million beverage containers each year, create over 2,000 new jobs and reduce the impact of plastic on our oceans. Yet the packaging industry continues to undermine the public’s desire and the political will for change. What can we do to ensure New Zealand catches up with other countries that are leading the way on reducing single-use packaging and the harm it causes?
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