Case studies

Winemakers Pernod Ricard are set to cut their natural gas bill by $21,000 a year thanks to a new hot-water boiler at the company's Auckland wine-bottling plant.

The $55,000 Northvale boiler is used to heat water for cleaning the equipment at the plant. It is almost 12% more efficient than the steam boiler it replaced, and it is expected to reduce the amount of natural gas the company uses by 479,000 kWh a year.

Ernslaw Bio-Energy's new mobile wood chipper means the Central Otago company is well-placed to take advantage of an expected increase in the use of wood-chip boilers.

The company bought the $250,000 German-made Heizohack HM10-500 KT chipper and the John Deere 7530 tractor which powers it in 2008 with the help of a business grant from the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority.

Carter Holt Harvey Kinleith's five-year plan for efficiency cut energy consumption per tonne of product by 31%. Although production increased by 25%, carbon dioxide emissions stayed stable.

A suggestion to trial biodiesel on one of Ocean Fisheries’ trawlers has seen the Lyttelton firm so convinced by the benefits of the fuel it has progressively changed all its vessels to run on biodiesel blends - including its delivery trucks – and commission a $2 million dollar trawler that runs exclusively on biodiesel.