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NZCPR CAMPAIGNS
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Bryan Leyland
The New Zealand electricity market has given us ever increasing prices and there is an increasing risk that a dry hydro year could lead to extremely high prices and blackouts. Major changes to the industry are needed – and quickly.
Many articles in the Herald have emphasised the dangers of man-made global warming and warned us that extreme measures are needed to save us from this imminent climatic disaster. Almost without exception, the authors have assumed that man-made carbon dioxide causes dangerous global warming, rapid sea level rise and more floods, droughts, cyclones and so on.
Australia has just scrapped its carbon tax, so should we scrap our Emissions Trading Scheme? The answer is yes, and for many reasons. The Emissions Trading Scheme has distorted farming and forestry, increased electricity and fuel prices and done little or nothing towards reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
Many people believe that electricity prices are too high. They find it difficult to understand why, when most of our electricity is generated by old hydropower stations, the price has escalated at well above the rate of inflation since about 2002 when the market first started to function as it was designed to do. They would be right.
The latest New Zealand Energy Strategy is a strange mixture of pragmatism, ignorance, unachievable aspirations and disregards our biggest energy resource. The policy on oil and gas is sensible and admirable. Anything that encourages exploration and development of these resources can only be applauded. But maintaining a strategy for 90% renewable energy–which, technically, is virtually unachievable–really demonstrates an ignorance of the fundamentals of so-called “climate change".
The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition has asked the High Court to rule on the validity of NIWA's "Seven Station" New Zealand Temperature Record (NZTR) that features prominently on its website and is used in information it passes on to schools and is also used to support the emission trading scheme, resource consent applications for wind farms and many other key aspects of policies designed to “fight climate change”.
I am writing this article in response to Muriel's question "why is electricity so expensive"? There is a simple answer to this question. "The electricity 'market'". But explaining how and why it drives up prices and will continue to do so, is rather more complicated. I will try to do just that.
Last Monday night I had the disturbing experience of being present at a public meeting called by Nick Smith (Minister for Climate Change Issues) to discuss New Zealand's 2020 emissions target.It was one of 9 public meetings and 5 invited meetings arranged by the Ministry for the Environment to get public feedback on what New Zealand should do towards a 2020 emissions target.
The drive for renewable energy in the form of windpower, marine power and the like, is driven by a belief that man-made greenhouse gases will cause dangerous global warming and that large-scale adoption of these technologies will “fight climate change”. To this end, thousands of MW of heavily subsidized wind power capacity are being added worldwide each year.
I have been involved in the electricity and energy business in New Zealand for the last fifty years. From 1992 to 2003, I produced the only independent review of electricity generation and demand in New Zealand.
