Government invests in reducing industry emissions

The Government is continuing to back businesses in their switch from fossil fuels to cleaner power to fuel their industry, with the announcement of 23 new projects that will receive government co-investment from Round Two of the Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry (GIDI) Fund.

The recipients will receive $28.7 million and will match this with $54.5m of their own funding.

The approved projects cover a range of sectors including meat, dairy, and other food production, as well as timber, energy supply, and chemical manufacturing. All applicants had to demonstrate significant economic and employment impact from their projects, have carbon reduction plans, and be ready to complete projects by October 2023.

Other projects in the round include:

• Pacific Coilcoaters will install three electric near-infrared ovens, to significantly decarbonise their Colorcote painting process, in South Auckland.
• Mataura Valley Milk will install New Zealand’s first high pressure electrode boiler (15MW) to replace all current coal fired heat duties on the MVM site, making the site 100% electrified.
• Alliance Group’s Lorneville site will use a 16MW electrode steam boiler to provide steam and hot water for meat processing, thus displacing significant coal use with renewable electricity.
• Golden Bay Cement replaces a gas fired dryer with a wood pellet dryer at a new build facility. Golden Bay Cement will extract and process natural pozzolans in the Bay of Plenty as a cement supplement to reduce the amount of embodied CO2 in concrete by up to 30% cement whilst improving concrete durability.
• Silver Fern Farms Pareora site will install a high temperature heat pump to preheat hot water for the processing plant, shifting heating load away from fossil fuels to electrification.

Together, the first two rounds of the GIDI Fund have supported projects that will deliver lifetime emissions cuts of 6.6 million tonnes.

This equates to 14-18 percent of the gross long-lived emission reductions required from the Climate Commission’s first carbon budget for the period 2022-2025.