Low Carbon Kāpiti Blog

By Paul Callister, David Keat, Robert McLachlan and Jake Roos, 30 August 2022

The proposed NZ Biofuels Obligation will mean fuel suppliers must blend a percentage of biofuel with petrol and diesel from 1 April 2023 or face steep fines. The government wants this biofuel to be sustainably produced in New Zealand, but their own advisors have told them such fuels are only available in very small quantities, and all the biofuel to meet the obligation will need to be imported. Some bodies, such as the Crown Research Institute Scion, have said that wood and waste wood grown in New Zealand could  be made into biofuel that could be used to meet the obligation.  But how realistic is this in the short to medium term? Again, the government’s own advisors have said: not at all. In this blog we examine why.

[Read more…] about Can We Use Wood to Decarbonize New Zealand Transport… or Not?

By Alison Lash, 27 August 2022

As most of us probably know, much of the Kāpiti coastal plain used to be a swamp.  Prior to Pākehā settlement, Māori used and managed the area as a vast food basket.  Pākehā settlers were unable to recognise the value of the area as a food source – to their eyes it was “empty” and “unproductive” land.  It’s a familiar story and resulted in the felling of the forests and the draining of the swamps in order to create pasture and market gardens.

That was then, this is now.  A hundred and fifty years later, we are faced with issues that neither Māori nor Pākeha could have conceived of back then: an over-heating atmosphere, rising seas, increasing floods and more severe droughts.  Over the last couple of decades there has been a lot of discussion of these issues as they affect Kāpiti but one issue still seems to fly under the radar – rising ground water levels.

[Read more…] about The swamps are coming back. What are we going to do about it?

The overlooked opportunity in response to the housing problem and climate emergency

By Sahra Kress, 25 August 2022

I have a lot I could say about living simply, but I will restrain myself to a few brief paragraphs about so-called ‘tiny houses’, and let the pictures say the rest.

[Read more…] about The Beauty of Simplicity- Tiny House Living

By Paul Callister, 19 August 2022

After years of Kāpiti ratepayers subsidising just a few passengers per day to fly out of Kāpiti airport, its closure in its current form gets closer. So what are the alternatives?

There are those still lobbying to keep the airport open. The key group is the Kāpiti Aeroclub. They are users of the airport but do not own the land. Their vision, set out on a website, is for housing, ‘zero emission’ flights and an innovation hub.

“Kāpiti airfield presents an opportunity for our district to become a National leader in carbon emission reduction through the utilisation of E-commuter aircraft. 

[Read more…] about Our ghost airport: An opportunity to build much needed houses

By Paul Callister and Robert McLachlan, 15 August 2022

Right now, we burn 10 tonnes of jet fuel every second – that’s an Olympic swimming pool every three minutes. To replace this with sustainable aviation fuel would require the current production to be increased by over 1,000 times. Aviation Accelerator Group, 2022

In 2021 at COP26 in Glasgow, New Zealand along with twenty-two other countries joined the “International Aviation Climate Ambition Coalition”, committing, amongst other things, to “Preparing up-to-date state action plans detailing ambitious and concrete national action to reduce aviation emissions and submitting these plans to ICAO well in advance of the 41st ICAO Assembly”. This Assembly of the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization will take place in September 2022.

It will be a real challenge for New Zealand. We are a nation of flyers. Our per capita domestic emissions are seven times those of mainland UK and nine times those of Germany.

[Read more…] about Decarbonising aviation: Fact or magical solutions?