A Taranaki-based green hydrogen project promising to help decarbonise heavy transport is being blocked by Greenpeace which is appealing the High Court’s approval of the proposal.
The $70 million project is a partnership between Hiringa Energy and Ballance Agri-Nutrients for the production of hydrogen from renewable electricity and water at a facility in Kapuni.
Along with producing green hydrogen for the heavy transport industry, the hydrogen produced will also be used to power the Ballance Agri-Nutrients Kapuni fertiliser plant for the manufacturing of urea.
The initiative received nearly $20 million in funding from the Government’s Provincial Growth Fund in 2020 and has also received significant investment from industries interested in New Zealand renewable energy including Japanese trading and investment multinational Mitsui & Co.
However, Greenpeace Aotearoa is appealing against the High Court’s approval of the work which covers the installation of four wind turbines and 5MW of electrolysis for green hydrogen production and a hydrogen refuelling station.
Greenpeace claims the High Court erred in failing to find that the consenting panel’s decision breached the Covid-19 Recovery Fast-Track Consenting Act by placing no conditions on when and how the project will transition from fertiliser feedstock production to hydrogen fuel production.
Senior campaigner Steve Abel says the consenting panel “rightly identified that transition to 100% fuel use within five years was a critical reason for its decision to grant the consent, yet the conditions of the consent don’t require that transition to ever occur”.
“This effectively allows Hiringa and Ballance to keep using hydrogen for manufacturing polluting synthetic nitrogen fertiliser for decades, and never actually transition to using it for transport fuel.”
Karl Adamson from Ngāti Haua is supporting Greenpeace’s appeal and says having no guaranteed timeframe for the transition of hydrogen production for the use in heavy transport supply “remains a concern”.
However, he says the “primary concern” was the location of the proposed wind turbines being used to generate power for the project.
They would be located at Parininihi ki Waitotara (PKW) farm which owns the whenua the wind turbines would be built upon.
“Ngāti Haua requested that they be relocated as a mitigation solution which was declined by Hiringa Energy citing financial constraints.
“The issue that Ngāti Haua has is that a lease agreement between Hiringa Energy and PKW was already in place before wider consultation had started thereby negating any realistic opportunity for Ngāruahine to assess the cultural impact of the wind turbines,” says Adamson.
‘Hard to understand’
Hiringa Energy and Ballance Agri-Nutrients says they are “shocked and disappointed” by Greenpeace’s decision to go to the Court of Appeal.
Hiringa chair Cathy Clennett says the action will stall the decarbonisation of heavy transport and could have a material impact on New Zealand’s emission reduction goals.
“Greenpeace’s motivation is hard to understand as we are all striving for the same goal of addressing climate change,” she says.
“The project has already been delayed by more than 12 months by the High Court appeal which was dismissed on all counts. Meanwhile more fossil fuels are burned. Despite this challenge, we remain committed to seeing the Kapuni project through to drive practical decarbonisation in Aotearoa,” Clennett says.
Hiringa points out that Greenpeace has continued to challenge the project while Te Korowai o Ngāruahine Trust has chosen to not further appeal. The project is supported by the mana whenua hapū, Ngāti Manuhiakai.
Hiringa says it has engaged with Ngāti Manuhiakai from early in the project and worked with it to mitigate effects. The hapū developed its own cultural impact assessment that is supportive of the project.
In her decision to dismiss the High Court appeal, Justice Grice said she was satisfied the expert panel did “properly consider the end use of urea and related environmental effects”.
“In particular, I am satisfied the conditions imposed by the panel, though they did not provide a hard time limit for transition to use of the hydrogen in the transport sector within five years, were adequate,” Grice said.
Green hydrogen development ‘vital’
Hiringa co-founder and chief executive Andrew Clennett says the partnership with Ballance is vital in terms of being able to fund the development of green hydrogen at the scale necessary.
“During the next five years New Zealand needs to accelerate the transition to hydrogen. It is already happening. In the main it will be for heavy transport – the big, long-haul trucks. But we have already seen rapid development of hydrogen in the aviation, marine, rail and industrial sectors overseas.
“Here, Air New Zealand has hydrogen on its radar as a zero emission fuel for its new fleet, and Team New Zealand has also developed hydrogen powered chase boats for the America’s Cup.
“Hydrogen trucks are already in New Zealand with NZ Post trialling them and TR Group planning to introduce a fleet in 2023. While we build our refuelling network throughout New Zealand and increase the numbers of zero emission vehicles (trucks and cars) on the road, we need an economic way of building that infrastructure and providing a flexible supply, as during the early establishment phases there won’t be a constant stream of vehicles arriving to fuel. This project in its consented form gives us that,” he says.
The Hiringa founders say that if small scale renewable projects like the Kapuni proposal take more than five years to develop with consents being held up by multiple appeal processes, it will become “impossible” for the country to meet its climate targets.
When consented, the project was one of the first in the world for green hydrogen production at scale.
Hiringa says the court processes mean New Zealand is now falling behind and Greenpeace’s actions will make renewable energy developers and innovators think seriously about whether to invest here.
Meanwhile, Balance chief executive Mark Wynne says the project will not increase the use of urea in New Zealand.
Instead, the urea from the project will replace up to 7000 tonnes of imported fertiliser most of which comes from the Middle East and Asia and produced there using coal and gas.
“Overall, this will offset up to 12,500 tonnes of carbon emissions, or the equivalent to over 4700 cars. To put this in perspective, New Zealanders would need to spend over $300 million on battery cars to have the same impact.
“Greenpeace also claims the hydrogen project will ‘flood the market with cheap urea’. In fact the contracted green hydrogen urea will cost more than the natural gas currently used as feedstock at our Kapuni plant,” Wynne says.
“Furthermore the contracted price is pegged to the price of imported urea, so this project with Hiringa Energy will not provide a cheaper supply of urea for the New Zealand market.”
