ASB launches new loan to help NZ farmers switch to solar power
As electricity prices soar, farmers appear to be looking for alternative energy sources.
OPINION: We all need energy to live the lives that we aspire to.
We need energy to survive; energy to produce food; energy to provide a home; energy to keep warm; energy to better our lives.
The Stone Age man needed energy in the way of fire to keep warm and to cook their meat. Imagine if we only used wood as our energy source; didn’t use gas, coal, or fossil fuels of any sort. How many trees would be left now and where would we be now? Stone Age man evolved into using fire energy to heat metals to make tools to help make their lives easier.
Currently we use various minerals to process into metals to be able to make the tools, machines, computers, to produce the medicines we need to sustain our growth – and all these processes need energy to undertake.
We use electricity in many processes and we need energy to generate that electricity. We use electricity in many ways in our homes, factories, hospitals and even in Parliament to allow our politicians to debate, whether for better or worse.
The majority of our energy has over time been produced using fossil fuel but we now see people wanting to stop us from creating energy by using fossil fuels to protect the environment, yet they still use the resources that the energy has provided for all of us to use.
Everyone wants a better health system, more hospitals, more doctors, more nurses, but to achieve this we need more buildings, and to do this we need more resources to use to build these, but we also need more energy - either to mine the products or to produce the equipment that goes into the hospitals.
Whatever we do, it takes energy and without energy we won’t survive. Even those people who talk carbon neutral businesses don’t seem to take into account the energy used in the first place to produce the office, house, factories etc which we currently have.
We use water, gas, coal, fossil fuels, wind, sun, geothermal, and nuclear energy to provide us with better lives.
We in the western countries tend to take energy as a god-given right but think we should halt any further use of fossil fuels to produce energy as it’s going to stop climate change.
Yet in the world’s developing nations they want what we have and need energy to reach a better standard of living.
Why can’t those people in the world’s developing nations have what we have, which took energy to create? They need the energy to get those resources and products that we have already and in most cases the fossil fuel they use is mainly coal.
Even though you may think that we don’t need energy daily, in fact we do. We all need energy for health, warmth, travel, survival; in actual fact we need it for most everything.
A brilliant result and great news for growers and regional economies. That's how horticulture sector leaders are describing the news that sector exports for the year ended June 30 will reach $8.4 billion - an increase of 19% on last year and is forecast to hit close to $10 billion in 2029.
Funding is proving crucial for predator control despite a broken model reliant on the goodwill of volunteers.
A major milestone on New Zealand's unique journey to eradicate Mycoplasma bovis could come before the end of this year.
We're working through it, and we'll get to it.
The debate around New Zealand's future in the Paris Agreement is heating up.
A technical lab manager for Apata, Phoebe Scherer, has won the Bay of Plenty 2025 Young Grower regional title.
OPINION: It's official, Fieldays 2025 clocked 110,000 visitors over the four days.
OPINION: The Federated Farmers rural advocacy hub at Fieldays has been touted as a great success.