Media Release
For release 26 October 2007

Energy Strategy reflects Growing Urgency on Climate Change

Windflow Technology supports the thrust of the NZ Government’s recent announcements about the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and the NZ Energy Strategy (NZES).

"There is growing urgency to take real action on climate change", said Windflow CEO Geoff Henderson, "something we at Windflow have been vocal about for years.”

“It is good to see that the ETS embodies the essential principle of polluter pays to absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) in the form of credits for forestry.”

“We are all polluters and we must do all we can to change the trends in atmospheric greenhouse gases towards a more sustainable future."

“Windflow also applauds the Government’s target to have 90% of our electricity generated from renewable sources by 2025, however we believe New Zealand can do better than that,” said Mr Henderson. “100% renewable electricity could be achievable in years with a reasonable rainfall, why not aim for that?”

Australian of the year, Professor Tim Flannery, recently stated that next month’s UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is expected to show that greenhouse gas levels had reached about 455 parts per million in CO2-equivalents by 2005.

Professor Flannery states that, "we thought we'd be at that threshold within about a decade, we thought we had that much time. But the new data indicates that in about mid 2005 we crossed that threshold."

Speaking as a long-term advocate of action to avoid dangerous climate change, Mr Henderson said, "We were surprised to see this figure expressed in this way. Like others we have tended to focus on CO2 levels (which have risen to about 385 ppm which is 30% higher than pre-industrial levels) rather than all the other greenhouse gases emitted by humanity.”

“Yet as Professor Flannery says, it looks as though to date 'we haven't done the homework right' by not plotting the overall greenhouse gas levels in CO2-equivalents. This sounds like a real wake-up call."

”The IPCC reports go through a consensus process where every word is scrutinized to be rigorously defensible”, said Mr Henderson. “As an engineer I‘ve done some back-of-the-envelope calculations about the rate at which the planet's ice could melt.”

“I hasten to say that these are not at all publishable but they give me a feel for how serious this issue is. This is especially so when I think of the non-linear effects my calculations omit, like the changing albedo at the North Pole, the square-cube law of heat transfer across solid boundaries and the huge differences between lubricated and dry friction coefficients."

"It sounds as though the IPCC report next month will tell us that greenhouse gas levels are not just 30%, but now about 50% higher than they have been at any time in the history of humanity's million-year long march from the cave to the carpark – and still accelerating.”

“Predictions of future impacts will always be uncertain but there is no doubt that we are conducting a dangerous experiment which is unprecedented in our history as a species. Business-as-usual only makes the experiment ever more dangerous.

“Instead we can switch to renewable energy and smarter ways of using energy, such as plug-in hybrid cars which can be wind-, hydro- or wood-powered through the electricity grid.

“In this way we can use abundant solar energy sustainably, not from a fossilized store which is hundreds of millions of years old. This offers a much more secure future.”

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