Comments on: Green energy policy launch

By: stuey

stuey — Fri, 10 Jun 2005 02:15:35 +0000

Just came across this Bonus Joules column on Scoop, which criticises the Greens Energy Policy as being unhelpful - he or she even awards the Greens a Energy Gobbledygook Flat Earth Award. But reading the incredibly disjointed and confusing commentary I found it impossible to work out exactly what the author has against the Green Energy Policy, other than an assertion that our policy uses the “symbols” and language of the corporate electricity companies and that this is a bad thing.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0506/S00125.htm

Oh well, maybe someone else will have more success at decyphering this article, maybe there are some lessons for how Green policy documents are written.

By: BernardWoolley

BernardWoolley — Thu, 26 May 2005 22:19:50 +0000

Overall I think the policy is good - we do need much more consideration given to reducing and making more efficient our energy usage. Increasing supply will not solve all our problems - some of which are excess.

A question I have, and it is partly related to Energy, and partly SOE management - what is the Green Party position on the ability of SOE’s to utilise cross-border leases to effectively sell our energy infrastructure assets like the South Island power grid being sold to the Wachovia Corporation (an American business, deal completed Dec 2003 under Michael Cullens watchful eye). I personnally believe it is inappropriate for the government to allow the sale of core aspects of our energy infrastructure to foreign managers. I believe that the HVDC link from Benmore to Haywards has also been ’sold’.

By: zoe

zoe — Thu, 26 May 2005 11:14:28 +0000

They’re just scared. Big business always loves the energy industry.
This policy has some great stuff in it and will be really useful for my current energy policy assignment! *grin*

By: stuey

stuey — Wed, 25 May 2005 23:28:38 +0000

yes sock you’re absolutely right that solar electricity generation is not really a goer - as well as expensive maintenance it is very expensive and energy instensive to produce the current generation of precious metal containing solar cells (maybe the next generation of nanotechnology organic cells will be better). This is why the Greens proposal only involves solar water heating which is a very low technology solution - exactly the same principle as those solar showers that people take camping. Not sure if the Greens proposal specifies whether passive is the prefered version (i.e. works using natural convection currents so doesn’t need electricity to circulate the water). And of course we also mention solar space heating (which again can be passive, or can involve electric fans to circulate the air and open and close shutters).

Dissapointing to see the media coverage. Only found these on the web:

Greens’ energy plans declared anti-growth by Business NZ (Dom Post)
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3293258a13,00.html
Greens energy policy welcome (Press Release: Royal Forest And Bird Protection Society)
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0505/S00266.htm

Like Phil, I also can’t understand the reaction of Business New Zealand. The Greens also recognise that sufficient electricity generation capacity is vital for the NZ economy, we just propose different ways of meeting the demand. Maybe some of the right-wing posters here can help explain this theory:

Business New Zealand executive director Phil O’Reilly said the price of the Greens’ energy policy would be no economic growth given New Zealand’s reliance on electricity generation for growth.

Not allowing the building of new coal-fired power stations was anti-growth.

How does it follow that replacing unenvironmentally-friendly inefficient expensive “Think Big” electricity generation schemes with environmentally-friendly efficient cost-effective small scale localised electricity generation schemes will automatically lead to no economic growth?

By: phil u

phil u — Wed, 25 May 2005 23:10:33 +0000

ya had to have a hoot at the electricity industries’ reaction to the solar hotwater plan…they said this would cause prices to rise as it would cause power surges..
does anyone know wtf they were on about..?

btw jeanette performed well on nat rad this morning on this topic..

phil(whoar.co.nz)

By: sock thief

sock thief — Wed, 25 May 2005 21:30:04 +0000

Having read Fitzsimons’ piece, its seems to be just about passive solar heating rather than electricity generation so my comment is not as relevant.

By: sock thief

sock thief — Wed, 25 May 2005 21:23:04 +0000

A recent New Scientist article looked at the solar power programmes in Northern Australia. One factor that had been overlooked was the ongoing maintenance of what is really quite complex equipment. Many of the subsidised solar power units were either not functioning or functioning poorly after a short period of time. It’s worth learning from that if we want to go down this road. We would have to create an ongoing technical support infrastructure.

By: Brian Boyko

Brian Boyko — Wed, 25 May 2005 17:29:57 +0000

Electricity has a fixed charge in New Zealand? I was always taught that electricity had a negative charge… all those electrons…

More seriously, I didn’t know electricity was on a fixed rate in New Zealand. Learn something new everyday.

By: richard

richard — Wed, 25 May 2005 12:10:40 +0000

To give them an incentive to reduce their energy consumption.

By: David Farrar

David Farrar — Wed, 25 May 2005 10:47:24 +0000

You talk about the fixed charge for electricity as if it is a government charge, but it is not, and generally having politicians set pricing models for companies can lead to disasters. Why not allow people to choose for themselves if they want a plan which has a fixed charge, or a plan which does not.