New Zealand’s largest single emissions reduction project has been announced for NZ Steel’s Glenbrook plant.
A deal has been struck between the government, NZ Steel and Contact Energy:
The new furnace – to which taxpayers are contributing up to $140 million through the Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry fund (GIDI), will dwarf the other Government projects.
The total cost is expected to be $300 million.
Stuff
Who is NZ Steel?
The steel company ran at a loss during the 1970s, until 1981 when a more optimised, commercially viable method for extracting iron was implemented, leading to an expansion of the Glenbrook facilities.[4]
In the Think Big era of New Zealand industrialisation, the mill was upgraded. In 1987, New Zealand Steel was acquired by Equiticorp. Equiticorp was bankrupted in the New Zealand sharemarket crash of 1987. In 1989 New Zealand Steel was acquired by Helenus Corporation, which consisted of Fisher & Paykel, Steel & Tube, ANZ Bank and BHP. In 1992, BHP took up a controlling interest with an 81 per cent shareholding by acquiring the shares of Fisher & Paykel and Steel & Tube. The company was initially renamed BHP New Zealand Steel Limited, but in 2002 it was renamed New Zealand Steel when BHP Steel was listed on the Australian Securities Exchange as BlueScope.[6]
Wikipedia
But following Stuff’s link to prior news (19 April 2023), we read:
The mill has little financial incentive to shrink its carbon dioxide emissions because it’s part a scheme [sic] to shield big-polluting exporters from carbon costs that might make them less competitive overseas.
NZ Steel – which, despite the “NZ” in its name, is owned by an Australian company, Bluescope – receives 90 per cent of its greenhouse gases cost-free from the Government under this exemption to the Emissions Trading Scheme. In the year to June, Bluescope received free carbon credits worth $117m from the New Zealand Government – in fact, the ASX-listed company has been the country’s single biggest recipient of free carbon credits over the years.
Stuff
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said, “This project dwarfs anything we have done to date. Alone, it will eliminate one per cent of the country’s total annual emissions.”
Minister for Energy Megan Woods said the furnace conversion would reduce emissions more than all the Government’s other projects combined.
Stuff
Christopher Luxon and David Seymour had this to say.
Yesterday Neil Oliver discussed the green agenda push. Here’s a dose of sanity.
Discuss it on The BFD.