REPLACING COAL

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 363, 26 October 1932, Page 3

REPLACING COAL

MUST RELY ON ELECTRICITY AS MINE SUPPLIES LIMITED. ECONOMISING USE. _ The point that New Zealand was right in concentrating upon the use of water power for the generation of electrical energy was stressed hy Dr. J. Henderson when he was speaking at Wellington last week on the subject of Arapuni. "New Zealand's supplies of coals are decidedly small," he said. "They have been estimated to he sufficient for about 100 years if the consump'tion expands at a certain moderate rate as population grows. This is a very short period in the history of a nation. The native timber supplies of the North Island are now nearly exhausted, but when the first settlers arrived in Wellington 90 odd years ago almost the whole island was clothed in dense forest, and the idea'of a timber searcity would have appeared almost grotesque. At the present time the idea of exhausting the existing deposits appears equally so. Nevertbeless, that time will eertainly come. A Limited Supply. Our coal dep-osits are finite; every ton taken from the mines leavss a ton less to he mined. Coal does not have the power of reproducing itself even to the extent that forests have. Coal deposits are simply an enormous store of fuel in process of destruction hy man. ^ Water, on the other hand, will continue to serve mankind long after the reluctant earth has yielded its last ton of coal, or at least long after coal has become too inaccessible and consequently too 'expensive to be used for power. "I cannot emphasise too strongly that it is our bounden duty not to consume needlessly our valuable and 'all too scanty deposits of coal. The proper usc of coal is as a raw material of industry; only the residue should be used as a source of heat. Our present reckless methods will place grave restrictions on the future generations, and all who have our national welfare' at heart and the prosp-erity of those who come after us will seek in every possible way to build up a strong pubhc opinion against the needlass consumption of coal."