City Energy

City Energy's mission is to provide affordable heat energy for domestic and industrial applications, with positive environmental outcomes. Due to the material available from New Zealand's sustainable forestry operations, utilisation of biomass for energy is critical to achieve New Zealand's net zero carbon goals by 2050. Biomass energy is a natural... form of solar energy, absorbing energy from the sun, carbon dioxide is converted into tree mass and stored as potential energy in the tree. The replanting cycle in sustainable forestry means the forest as a whole is in a constant carbon cycle of emission and absorption resulting in a net zero change in total atmospheric carbon dioxide. Utilisation of fossil fuels for electricity generation occurs in order to meet peak electricty demand which accounts for around 20% of total electricity generation in New Zealand. Electricity peaks are caused, in part, by heating in winter and electric heat use in households create demand greater than can be supplied by our renewable sources. Turning on the heater or heatpump when our renewable electricity sources are exhausted means 100% of that electricty is generated from fossil fuels. Utilisation of firewood reduces this electricty demand at those critical peaks and replaces it with a renewable energy. There are few legislative barriers for homes to install woodburners and is a simple but powerful way to increase our renewable energy consumption. While electricity Process heat uses one third of all energy consumed in New Zealand and a staggering 60% of this is from fossil fuels. Large coal powered boilers used in heating large buildings such as schools and hospitals, and industrial processes such as milk drying and sanitisation plants can be co-fired or converted to biomass through using woodchip instead of coal instantly reducing emissions.Read More