In an opinion piece in the Dominion Post, sp0kesman David Shearer argues that New Zealand needs to catch up in terms of investment in, and recognition of the importance of, clean-tech.
A small number of New Zealand companies are already involved in the industry, producing technologies able to convert algae into fuel, solid waste into gas, and the exhaust from steel mill smoke stacks into ethanol.
An excerpt: (read in full here)
“New Zealand is well placed to take advantage of the clean-tech expansion. We already have the credentials of being seen as “clean and green”. We have smart, out-of-the-box thinkers and top-of-the-world scientists. But we’re not particularly clever at commercialising those ideas. Other like-sized countries such as Denmark, Finland, Singapore or Israel are well ahead of us.
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“PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that 69 per cent of the largest 1200 companies in the world will be making money from products and services that deal with climate change. It puts the business opportunity for New Zealand at between $9b and $22b, rising by 4.5 per cent annually.”