Auckland Climate Action

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/394668/fonterra-reduces-reliance-on-coal-ahead-of-plan

Friday 10/5/2019  

A couple of cow costumes livened up the journey home for commuters passing Fonterra’s Head Quarters in Fanshawe St this afternoon. Auckland Climate Action was joined by two supporters dressed in fashionable colour-ways, the dramatic black and white Friesian, and the reliable beige and brown Jersey, dairy cow costumesas once again around 20 members and friends of ACAturned out to send a message to our biggest dairy company – that THERE IS NO PLACE IN TODAY’S CLIMATE-ENDANGERED WORLD FOR AN INDUSTRY THAT STILL BURNS COAL. 

By now everyone knows the atmosphere is overheating and the climate IS changing. That this directly endangers the dairy industry is well understood by all farmers. But this same dairy industry is by now right up there with New Zealand Steel in its level of coal consumption – and is using sub-bituminous coal as fuel for its factory boilers, which is more pollutant than the high-qualitycoal necessary to manufacture steel. This is not a record to be proud of. Fonterra could, and should, at least be trialling alternative methods of production including burning the forestry industry’s wood waste (which is plentiful in the north Waikato area) as a renewablealternative to local coal. Using Electricity to heat the boilers is another alternative which other dairy companies are looking at.  We call on Fonterra to please, get their act together and show some sense of responsibility towards the future generations whose only home is this lovely planet called Earth.

https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/country/388903/james-cameron-takes-on-kiwi-farmers from RNZ.

Press Release

Fonterra, New Zealand’s second largest coal user, has said its goals are to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 30% by 2030 and to install no new coal boilers from that date. But the IPCCreport, released last October, shows that this rate of action is disastrously slow, according to Auckland Climate Action spokesperson, Peter Whitmore.

“The report says that to hold global warming to under 1.5 °C, coal emissions must be reduced world-wide by around 67% by 2030. To make this possible, developed countries, and industries like Fonterra that have other clearly available sustainable energy options, realistically need to be right out of coal by this date.”

Whitmore says that although the need for action has now been clear for decades, Fonterra’s manufacturing-related emissions, as shown in their recently released 2018 Sustainability Report, have still not yet started to fall. “The report shows that Fonterra is currently emitting over 800,000 tonnes of CO2 a year from coal usealone, which at an indicative damage figure of $150 a tonneamounts to over $120 million dollars of damage”, says Whitmore.

“While their very recent move at one of their smallest plants to start co-firing with coal and wood biomass, and their announced plans to move another small plant from coal to electricity, are little steps in the right direction, they are way too slow.”

“Because of lack of global action, the world is now facing acatastrophic climate crisis”, says Whitmore. “To play its part in preserving a livable planet for mankind and other species, Fonterra needs to be right out of coal by 2030, and preferably by 2025. This requires a quantum leap in how they respond to the issue. Fonterra needs to take major action to address this, starting right now.”

 Members of Auckland Climate Action and other local groups plan to hold a protest outside Fonterra’s head office at 109 Fanshawe St (corner of Fanshawe and Halsey Streets, opposite Victoria Park, Auckland), from 3pm on Friday 10 May 2019, calling for Fonterra to immediately start taking much more rapid action to reduce its emissions.

Spokesperson

Peter Whitmore

Auckland Coal Action

021 457 465

whitmore.peter@gmail.com

Climate change campaigners aired Fonterra’s ‘dirty laundry’ in public yesterday. Auckland Coal Action have called the dairy giant’s promises to reduce its coal use largely ‘greenwash’ – an attempt to appear environmentally friendly without taking any substantive action.

“Now that the Government has signalled an end to offshore oil exploration, it is high time we turned our attention to coal, the fossil fuel that makes the largest contribution to causing climate change”, said spokesperson Jill Whitmore. “Fonterra cannot claim to be ‘the world’s leading milk processor’ if this requires it to be the second largest coal user in this country.”

Fonterra recently announced that it would install no new coal boilers after 2030.  Whitmore calls this a “feeble target” because coal boilers have a typical life span of 40 years. She points out that 2030 is the date by which leading climate scientists say the world must have completely phased out coal if we are to maintain a liveable climate.

With an improvised washing line of messages for Fonterra, including a giant pair of bloomers urging Fonterra to ‘Quit the Greenwash’, protesters made their view heard, opposite Fonterra head office.

Images from the protest below.

 

Shareholders arriving at Fonterra’s AGM this morning were shown the way by a trail of signs set up by Auckland Coal Action. Despite the cooperative’s byline of ‘sustainable dairying’, Fonterra has now overtaken the Huntly power station as the second largest coal user in the country and is planning on opening two huge coal boilers at Studholme in Canterbury. (Submissions close on Friday.)

ACA put up a sign trail just outside Fonterra’s private road, after having first put it up on their private road and being sent off by a security guard. However, the second spot was just as good – traffic had to pass slowly, having just crossed the railway line and needing to than make a sharp right turn.

The five signs said:

• Biggest threat to NZ farming is climate change
• New coal boilers at Studholme = 40 more years of coal
• Waste wood boilers – proven technology
• Will Fonterra gamble, with shareholders’ funds, on no carbon charge in next 40 years?
• Fonterra decides: for sustainability, or climate destruction?

The Fonterra AGM was held at their dairy factory at Waitoa on the southern Hauraki Plains, near Matamata.

Once again, Auckland Coal Action were back at Mangatawhiri on the last day of the long weekend, to protest Fonterra’s use of coal at its Waikato milk plants. As usual, traffic was slow so thousands of motorists had plenty of time to read and think about our several signs.