Electric chickens are the future?
It comes as the first full inventory of New Zealand fossil fuel machines was released this week as part of The Machine Count project.
It found there are around 10 million of them, and that it is technically possible and cost effective to electrify 84 percent of the machines currently available in New Zealand.
It also found another 10 percent could be electrified if we made more effort to make better options available.
Jeff Collings who was a case study in the research has already made the move to electrification.
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RNZ News
24 minutes ago
- RNZ News
Combating organised crime: Call for government and businesses to pool data
Guns, drugs and cash seized by the police during operations in Christchurch and Auckland in 2023. Photo: Police / supplied A ministerial advisory group is calling for a nationwide information sharing network, or "data lake", along with a new sharing framework to help combat organised crime. The group says government agencies typically avoid the risk of sharing secure data, but a more proactive sharing approach could help target crime groups. They want a tech company to build the new "data lake" - a secure platform that would allow agencies like police and Customs to share the data they already collect with each other, in a usable format. It would automatically reformat encrypted data to make it standardised and usable by enforcement agencies, and would be hosted in a secure government-controlled cloud platform with data partitioned to ensure only those with appropriate clearance could access it. Artificial intelligence could also be used, helping identify patterns across things like financial transactions, travel records, corporate structures, and identity data to potentially help map criminal networks, match people with aliases, and provide real-time alerts. "This architecture can be scalable, privacy-conscious, and legally compliant. It creates a future-proof platform for secure and governed information sharing, enabling agencies to act with a unified view of organised crime," the report said. Ministerial advisory group chair Steve Symon says information needs to get to the right places. Photo: RNZ / Nick Monro Chair Steve Symon told RNZ most of the data involved was already collected by various government agencies, so it would mostly be a tool to help use that data to find international criminals. "We don't want a situation where we we open up the floodgates of information sharing, but we do want to make sure the information is getting [to] the right places," he said. "Whether that be information by Customs about travel movements or information held by the companies office about companies or how companies have been registered, there's a variety of different pieces of information that are currently held by government agencies. "The idea of the data lake is to bring together those bits of data that might assist with tackling organised crime, and then have some oversight in terms of who can access that data and for what purpose." The group found government agencies typically avoided data sharing, as it was seen as risky - what the report described as an "extreme level of risk aversion" - but this needed to be changed to keep up with organised crime making more use of technological advances. "Organised crime is organised. We are not," the report said. The group had looked at potential costs of getting a data lake set up, he said, but that was all subject to commercial sensitivities and he refused to give an estimate. "There have been discussions and we have been aware of an approach that might be made, but we can't discuss it because, of course, we don't want to prejudice the outcome of those discussions. "It is a difficult one for me to answer without prejudicing the communications that the government would have to have with a provider like Microsoft." He said the decision on whether to proceed given the potential cost would be made by the government. A 150 kilogram haul of cocaine seized by Customs in Tauranga last month. Photo: Customs NZ/Supplied He said the group wanted to strike a balance between privacy and the rise of organised crime in New Zealand, which it had highlighted in another report in March - pointing to rising drug use showing up in wastewater testing and increasing levels of cyber fraud. The group also wanted more cooperation with other countries - particularly Pacific Islands - and with businesses like airports, ports, banks and telecommunications companies for tracking things like fraud and drug smuggling. Symon said he saw first-hand the extent of the drug problems affecting Fiji a couple of weeks ago on a trip with Associate Police Minister Casey Costello. "A lot of those drugs are destined for New Zealand or Australia ... there is a lot of information, a lot of data we could use and work with them to share, to help them in their fight which wouldn't be a significant privacy concern for New Zealanders." The group also suggested government agencies working more closely with the private sector - businesses - in specific high-risk areas - like an airport having problems with baggage handlers . He said in that example, information shared between the airport, the private businesses working within the airport, and enforcement authorities could identify things like when staff had called in sick but their access cards were still being used. "We see it in border areas such as airports, our sea ports, we also see it in high-risk in industries such as banks and telcos in the respect that they hold critical data which would be relevant to the fight against organised crime." The report noted that businesses wanted to be involved, and would benefit from being able to avoid effects of organised crime, like fraud. "That is the carrot ... there also needs to be a stick - a legislative mechanism for requiring the less than willing segment of the private sector to come to the table." The group suggested making the failure to report certain suspicious activities to the police commissioner an offence. Other suggestions for cooperating with businesses included creating dedicated liaison roles within Customs, police and other relevant agencies to deal with the groups involved in the data sharing, as well as encouraging the establishment of organised crime prevention roles within businesses themselves. Another option would be an "organised crime supply chain rating system" which would rate and accredit businesses based on their organised crime resilience and information sharing maturity, to encourage good behaviour. A haul of more than three tonnes of cocaine intercepted from a vessel in the Pacific Ocean in 2023. Photo: NZ Police / Supplied Symon said the aim would be to ensure zero data breaches. "We're not naive. There have been occasions where for example police officers have accessed [data] for inappropriate reasons and those have been publicised and dealt with, but what we are talking about here is data held by enforcement agencies. "The benefit of a data lake would be that you would have that information held in one repository, and you could have controls and information about who accesses that data and when, and have a electronic paper trail." He acknowledged there were risks with sharing sensitive data with an AI tool, but said the options for protecting that data would need to be examined in commercial negotiations. The report also called for a minor legislative change to the Privacy Act which would aim to simplify the process of information sharing between agencies. It would mean that when information was shared for the purposes of tackling organised crime, the agency requesting the data would be held responsible, rather than the agency providing the data. "This would simplify the process, ensure that the relevant belief is held by a person who holds sufficient information to make that belief properly informed and it would transfer the privacy risk from the provider to the requestor (usually an enforcement agency)," it said. If the model proved workable and valuable, however, it could be expanded. "If there is success with that sharing, and we can show the public and the gain public confidence in the way we're approaching it, then it's certainly something where you could explore going further," Symon said. The report highlighted a plan to also set up a new legal framework to help support more data sharing. "Under current settings, there is no clear and transparent framework that authorises the sharing of sensitive information with private sector partners," the report said. "For example, in the border security space, there is no clear and transparent framework that enables the two-way sharing of sensitive information between Customs and private sector partners such as operators of Customs Controlled Areas and other supply chain partners." The framework would: Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
18 hours ago
- RNZ News
Tech: Fortnite wins battle in Oz, AI co Perplexity vies to buy
Photo: 2018 Anadolu Agency/AFP Technology commentator Peter Griffin joins Susie to look at a victory for Fortnite creator Epic Games, which has won a partial battle in Australia over restrictions placed on it in Apple and Google Play stores - but will it result in any changes? As antitrust action gathers pace in the US against Google, an AI company called Perplexity is throwing its hat in the ring to buy Chrome - with an offer that's wildly more than the small company is valued at. And ChatGPT creator Open AI is building its own AI browser to take on Chrome - could it be a game changer in how people browse the internet? Peter Griffin is a Wellington-based science and technology journalist.
RNZ News
19 hours ago
- RNZ News
High hopes for new biofuel's impact on shipping emissions
A cargo ship sails through the Panama Canal, in Panama City, 13 June 2024. Photo: AP Start-up venture Biowave has been launched to help commercialise new technology which converts wood into biofuel that can be blended with fossil-based marine heavy fuel oil. The new biofuel technology has been developed by a team of scientists at Scion - now part of the Bioeconomy Science Institute. Biowave co-founder Amanda Davies said while much of the focus had been on sustainable aviation fuels, finding solutions for shipping was just as important. "Zero carbon fuels are going to be the ticket to market access for our exporters in the future. We can't rely on importing them. "We really need to be backing technologies like this coming out of New Zealand - this is a world-leading technology." While shipping is New Zealand's "economic lifeline" - both imports and exports depend on it - it's one of the country's biggest contributors to greenhouse gases. Global shipping accounts for about 3 percent of annual CO2 emissions currently but this is expected to rise up to 13 percent in the coming decades. Fellow Biowave co-founder Dr Paul Bennett said it had the potential to make a "substantial contribution to the maritime industry's decarbonisation goals". Regulatory bodies such as the International Maritime Organisation set aggressive decarbonisation targets, such as cutting industry emissions to zero by 2050. "We are committed to driving down biofuel costs and accelerating clean energy innovations for the maritime sector. Major exporters are increasingly concerned about the carbon emissions linked to their products, with market access becoming a real risk." Additionally, biochar created as a co-product through the process would act as a carbon sink and allow them to make the biofuel zero- or even negative-carbon. Davies said preliminary work suggested the new biofuel technology could significantly reduce emissions. "This technology offers a cost-competitive, sustainable solution for New Zealand's economy and could be scaled globally," she said. "The maritime industry is actively seeking solutions, and we've seen significant interest in Biowave from key stakeholders across the supply chain, including shipping companies, energy providers, ports and product exporters." The next stage will be to test a 20 percent blend of biofuel in an engine, and if successful they expect to be able to trial onboard a ship in the years to come before the biofuel is available commercially. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
