UPDATE: Coal mining company Solid Energy has been put into 'voluntary administration' as the global coal industry collapses under the demand to reduce pollution. The Government's failure to plan for a fossil fuel free future will ultimately lead to more jobs losses affecting Kiwi families up and down New Zealand. Our full response.

Last week, Genesis, the company that runs Huntly Power Station, announced it was shutting down its smoke-belching, coal-fired boilers as competition from cheaper power like wind and solar is making it too expensive to run.

This is good news for our health and the future of our children, and an important step towards taking the pollution out of our economy.

But while we herald this as a victory for common sense and necessary to safeguard our planet, we must not for... Read more >

Good news. Huntly power station, the remnant of a polluting, coal based power system in New Zealand will be shutting down its choking smoke stacks in favour of clean energy sources like solar and wind.

Genesis, the company that runs the dinosaur plant, has made this move because it’s now cheaper and better for our health to ditch dirty coal and harness the power of New Zealand’s massive clean energy resources.

It is a good - albeit long overdue - business decision that marks the end of large scale coal use to power our homes and comes on the back of a global collapse in the coal industry, where bankruptcies and cancelled projects are filling the business media pages.

It is also a decision that will leave John Key’s pollution obsessed government with soot on their face.

In his term as Prime Mi... Read more >

I hope this finds you well. I just wanted to update you on some goings on down here in New Zealand.

Last Thursday, just as the sun was rising over our capital of Wellington, four activists scaled our parliament building to install solar panels on the roof and drop a large, satirical banner targeting the Prime Minister.

Check it out:

The reason for the early start was to call upon the government to take real action on climate change… now! Despite our global clean and green image, our record on climate action is poor. A recent public consultation on what pollution reduction targets NZ should take to Paris was a total farce, with the Government falsely claiming the bigger the target, the greater the cost will be to the economy. It was an attempt to persuade the public that we should do no... Read more >

Our Associate Minister for Climate Change, Simon Bridges, doesn't know what 'emissions reduction targets' are. That was his shocking response to a question from opposition MP Dr Megan Woods last month.

And it’s scary because this is basically what the government is going to do to reduce pollution. Not only is it Bridges’ job to know about it, but it’s  also pretty straightforward.

To be fair, not everyone will be as cosy with the term as us policy wonks who lie awake worrying about these things, but come on - the guy is paid 250 grand a year of taxpayers’ hard-earned cash to know this stuff.

So, when in response to a parliamentary question, Bridges feigned naivety and asked what "she means by ‘emissions reduction targets’" and requested for Woods to be more specific, my head fell crashing int... Read more >

The government’s deep sea oil programme is failing. There I said it. Like other polluting businesses around the world, the deep sea oil industry has been stunned by the seismic shift in investor support for clean power.

Shareholders, pension funds and financial powerhouses are all looking to a future where pollution is taken out of our economy and our homes and businesses are powered by cleaner, safer sources of energy. And it’s starting to hurt the oil industry.

At recent meetings, top executives from Shell, Statoil and Chevron were rocked by the level of discontent raised by shareholders, who felt they faced huge financial risk due to their company’s lack of plan to deal with climate change.

As a result, proposals were tabled requiring the companies to disclose just how much their busi... Read more >