Tag: The Electric Fleet

Articles discussing the arrival of the electric fleet in NZ.

Submitting a test case to the Green Fund for consideration

The $100 million Green Fund was announced last year in order to showcase the coalition’s commitment to finding scalable ways to fight climate change.

But since then, not a lot has happened. On the 1st of March I received an update on the progress of the Green Fund. The update read as follows.

Good afternoon, 

You are being sent this email because you have asked to receive updates on New Zealand Green Investment Finance (NZGIF). The following update has been placed on our webpage : https://treasury.govt.nz/information-and-services/commercial-portfolio-and-advice/new-zealand-green-investment-finance and also on our LinkedIn page.

What now?·       NZGIF is in its establishment phase. This follows the appointments to the board late last year of Cecilia Tarrant (Chair) and David Woods (Director). There is a lot to do before NZGIF will be fully open for business.·       

The next step is to complete the Board appointments.  Applications have closed and are being considered. Appointments will be completed by mid-May.·       

We’re also working on company incorporation. We are in the process of developing the company constitution and other foundation documents, which will enable NZGIF to be incorporated by mid-May. ·       

When will NZGIF be operational? Exact timelines will depend on decisions directors make; however, we expect to see NZGIF fully operational by the middle of the year. Thank you for your continued interest in NZGIF.  We will provide further updates on the priorities and the process for applying for investment as this is made publically available. 

Regards,New Zealand Green Investment Finance

I guess that from an avid viewer’s standpoint, who has read the headlines but who is as yet uncertain how the fund will work, I am a bit worried from the above email that the fund may be losing traction. Which is a shame, because I desperately need some money to go green. 

I recently realised by way of a spreadsheet that I can reduce my travel emissions working as a sales consultant by as much as 20% by switching to a hybrid electric car. The decision was first of all a financial one: switching to a hybrid would pay for itself over ten years in the cost of fuel savings that I would achieve alone, essentially providing close to a 10% ROI. (The return on investment is so high because I am looking at second hand hybrids in the $7k range. A new hybrid will not achieve this.) I need soon to update my car anyway, so this seems to be a wise way to go about things.

In my view, this is the sort of investment that the Green Fund should be exploring – environmentally friendly initiatives that also achieve a return on investment in excess of the long term government bond rate. But it remains to be seen in practice whether this would ever happen. The nature of the second hand car market is that it is rapidly moving, with good deals disappearing off the market every day. The fund, on the other hand, seems to be moving fairly slowly. 

So I am going to test the waters by sending them an email with the spreadsheet attached. I am interested to hear whether they respond at all, and if so, whether they will be able to assist at all in my scenario. 

Reducing the mass of vehicles on the road might contribute to a climate change win

This little epiphany occurred to me when I was reconsidering some of the past work I had done on ebikes. Ebikes are incredibly eco-efficient when compared to petrol cars and even electric vehicles, not just because they utilise electric power as well as pedal-assist, BUT ALSO because the vehicle itself has a far lower mass than virtually all motor cars. In fact, I calculated in a previous blog article that an electric bike is roughly 21 times more eco-efficient than a Nissan Leaf. 

Currently, most climate change goals focus on switching petrol cars to the electric fleet. An equally valid goal might be to reduce the overall mass of motor vehicles on the road by a certain date. 

But if you think about it, what really does the damage when a car drives is not the fuel type that a vehicle consumes, but the amount of mass of that vehicle. The greater the mass, the more energy required to motor the vehicle. 

Putting incentives in place to get people to switch down from large gas guzzlers to smaller, more eco-efficient vehicles, even if those vehicles still run on petrol, could in some ways be very effective and another way (on top of the switch to renewable energy vehicles) that one could compound the reduction in carbon emissions from more efficient vehicle use. 

Switching to an ebike has reduced my carbon emissions from travel by around 900 kilograms last year. It has also saved me a pretty penny in fuel expenses. 

The point is that there are vectors to reducing carbon emissions through motor vehicle use that are not currently being considered and that ought to be forefront of people’s minds.