Yesterday the National government released their much anticipated Energy Strategy. The first draft that was released for consultation was pretty poor, and the final version is even worse.
While they claim they are still committed to the goal of having 90 percent of our electricity generated from renewable sources, most of their actual plan heads in the other direction.
We have an abundance of renewable energy sources in New Zealand. We could be world leaders in renewable energy. Instead the National government want to focus on extracting more fossil fuels like gas and oil.
It’s a short-sighted approach that does nothing to insulate us from the inevitable price increases that are on the way, not to mention the damage it will do to our environment.
National trumpets the fact that the amount of electricity we’ve generated in the last few years from renewable sources has increased, never mind the fact that it’s rained quite a bit. What happens when we get another dry year? We need more wind, more solar, more local generation, and more of a focus on energy efficiency.
It’s great that the National government have at least said they agree with the 90% renewable target put in place under the last Labour government, but we need to do a lot better if we’re going to meet it.
Your list of things we ‘need’ misses one important thing – energy conservation (which is not the same as efficiency). I expected National to miss this. They are focused on big business and there are no profits for them in conservation or demand side management, as part of an energy strategy. Similarly, small scale distributed renewable generators (wind and water turbines, CHP, solar PV, even solar thermal) do not figure significantly for the same reason.
It was great to hear Phil Goff supporting offshore drilling, with safeguards. Some great paying jobs and good income for the country so hope he also supports Bathursts new mine here on the coast too.
more solar (power)??
Like peacocks milk, I didnt know we had any.
“National trumpets the fact that the amount of electricity we’ve produced in the last few years from renewable resources has increased, never mind the fact that it rained quite a bit”
“quite a bit”? Chris, do you have the annual mean rainfall for the Pukaki catchment over say the last 5 years?
Are you in favor of reducing the amount of red tape involved in resource consent?
This would help in establishing more alternative energy sources. eg. Wind farms.
Well OL, heres some interesting data about Waikato River levels just before Hamilton
Continuous records began: 1980
Catchment area: 166 square km
Highest recorded river level: 3.429m on July 26th 1986
Lowest recorded river level: 0.084m on March 17th 2008
Lowest level in 2008
Labour must must must look at reducing transport system and logistical dependence on fossil fuels. 150,000 private cars need to come off the roads per annum for the next 10 years. In comparison the renewables generation of electricity is a relatively easy issue.
With transport arrangements the way they are now, the NZ economy will stagnate painfully at less than $3/L petrol.
@ghost
If most of our energy was generated on the Waikato, your data may be relevant. but it’s not.
CV – there was an article in the Mainlander section of The Press a couple of Saturdays ago which said we could be self sufficient for decades with diesel extracted from lignite in Southland.
OL , the clutha river flows are above average in the last few years as well. You seem to have to pay to get more detail.
So here we have the main rivers for hydro with greater flow . Point proved really
George, did that “decades” worth of diesel take into account the quadrupling of diesel usage once cheap imported petrol runs down?
No?
Read the article. It was from 13th August and is available on line if your library gives access to PressDisplay.
According to the article the amount generated would make us self sufficient for several hundred years. So I guess that even if we quadrupled consumption it’d still give us until well past the middle of this century to sort out other alternatives.
Using the lignite to create urea ( fertiliser) is more viable.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/news/2900520/1-4b-plan-for-lignite-conversion.
The diesel plant would cost $ 10-$15 billion as opposed to $2 bill for the urea.
As usual the Australians were starting this sort of thing up while Key was pushing for cycleways
http://www.latrobefertilisers.com.au/project_latrobe.html#urea
More and more i see the party ideologies of new zealand as balanced between a short term profit raking focus and longer inclusive holistic focus, more based on the society and its people.
With an opportunity for massive instructure projects this would have been the perfect time for a longer strategic view to energy usage and generation with consideration to peak oil, shortages and rising costs of energy that will directly effect businesses and all kiwi’s.
We, as a country, need bold decisive leadership and direction on raft of relavent issues that face us now and the next 50 years, renewable energy is just one.
+10,000
These projects could be employing 75,000 New Zealanders within a year. From project managers, IT, engineers, and middle management to labourers, chefs and HT drivers.
CV – We could create those jobs, but at what cost to the rest of the economy? I’m sure you’re already aware of the economic study of Spain’s “green jobs” initiatives (Study of the effects on employment of public aid to renewable energy sources) which found that for every green job created (at great expense) 2.2 jobs in the conventional economy were lost. That is along with the increase in electricity prices. Or another study from Scotland which found that quote
Absolutely right QTR.
There is so much wrong with this post it staggers belief.
Why would we want to be? Many renewables cost 200%+ more than non-renewables to generate power and our transport sector (from memory) is still 97% oil based.
Complete and utter nonsense. There is an estimated $600,000,000,000 worth of non-rewenable resources in our EEZ. That’s a massive amount of resource to trade with the world, a lot of living standard for Kiwis and royalties to fund health and education that you want to leave in the ground and try and force (incredibly environmentally damaging technologies) to work.
Study after study has shown that increasing energy efficiency only results in people using the same amount of power as before just increasng their comfort. A complete and utter waste of time in reducing generation demand and not economically efficient.
It’s a ridiculous target that costs Kiwis living standards and hits the poor – who can least afford higher power prices – the hardest.
@QtR
Was the job loss as a result of substitution from old energy tech to new?
If it was then that is not so applicable to NZ as there is fairly low employment in the energy extraction/processing sectors.
@ Jeremy H
Not sure why you are positioning 90% as a ridiculous target given that (I believe) around 86% is already renewable. This should be achievable by 2020 even with organic demand growth particularly if a framework is put in place to encourage power decentralisation, given that heat loss across long distance HVAC transmission is a big problem in NZ (up to 20% average wastage to point of consumption I think).
Gregor – It’s about opportunity cost. The labour created through subsidizing costly and inefficient renewable energy shifts labour from more productive non-subsidized areas of the economy. Couple that with inevitably higher electricity prices and you get lower economic growth than you otherwise would do.
One could also make the argument (as is done here) that the government in picking winners stifles innovation, inculcates the big players from competition and hence hinders renewables becoming cheaper, more efficient and more competitive.
QtR –
If there is already labour liquididy (i.e significant unemployment) in the skilled workforce sector, is the opportunity cost actually a real issue? I mean it’s not as if were trading this off against a labour or capital shortage in the manufacturing sector.
WRT subsidy and govt involvement, taking a look at what Denmanrk has done in the renewables sector paints a picture of both high energy cost, a commanding position in terms of innovation and high employment growth (so these are not necessarily mutually exclusive).
In the energy space, price utility is not always the best measure given that it is an essential service.
There is a place for both regulation and direct stimulus to meet the demands of public good / utility (social, environmental etc.) beyond the purely economic.
Gregor W – I would be wary of using Denmark as an example. Denmark increased wind generation to 10% of its electricity generated yet there was no decrease in net carbon emissions because wind does not provide baseload generation so back-up generation is still required and isn’t decreasing carbon emmissions the main argument for renewable energy. From the relevant section of this book
and that was over a time period where energy demand growth was essentially flat.
They pay the highest electricity rates in the EU while they have to export the energy they produced and heavily subsidised to neighbouring nations at below market rates because of the intermittant nature of wind energy. Also an economic study from Denmark (Wind energy the case of Denmark) found that 90% of the jobs were just transferred from other technology industries and that Denmarks ecnomic growth is lower than it otherwise would have been.
QtR –
So we both agree (in a roundabout way) that the economics don’t make sense @ face value.
However, as per my prior comment, I’m suggesting that the ‘job substitution’ meme is not necessarily valid in NZ. We don’t have a hugely diverse manufacturing base to pinch jobs from. What we do have is highly mobile, underutilised, well trained labour and comparatively low wages – furthermore, although we have probably missed the boat, Denmark has made quite a bit of money out of tech exports and expertise in this sector as a direct result of govt. policy intervention.
My position on this is more ‘public good’ rather than economic.
I don’t think anyone is seriously suggesting carbon emmission reduction as the basis of supporting renewables in NZ given our already large renewable generation.
Essentially, my view is that it’s better to sell non-renewables or utilise them differently (i.e phosphates) than burn them @ home (where possible).
Wrt subsidised exporting – that can’t apply to NZ so not an issue.
Much of the argument in comments seems to be myopic.
I would take it that no one seems to be worried about the compounding legacy of damage to the biosphere which is out of control and beyond “safe” limits with acceleration at alarming rates.
Are the consequences not evident. Do you not have children or grand children to think about.
Or is Cornucopia your el Dorado.