Those with the power want you to save power
The Major Electricity Users’ Group (MEUG) wants us all to start conserving power. The Press reports:
there was a short-term option which involved all households and commercial customers making “quick and easy” conservation savings “in the interest of the economy”.
“By saving demand now, we will conserve lake storage, reduce the risk assessed by suppliers next year and help lower current spot and forward prices that will lead into future retail price rises.”
MEUG represents about 25 companies that consume about a third of the nation’s electricity. Its most influential member is the country’s largest power consumer, the New Zealand Aluminium Smelters plant at Tiwai Point near Invercargill, which accounts for 15 per cent of New Zealand’s electricity demand.
So let’s get this straight, to make sure some Aussie shareholders have a growing dividend, Comalco wants us ALL to have cold showers next winter?
Now the Greens are the ones that are usually portrayed by our political opponents and some business leaders as *wanting* New Zealanders to sit in candle-lit rooms wearing jerseys. Maybe it is because they imagine we’re all trampers and we like the novelty of staying in a DOC hut so much we want everyone to enjoy it at home every night of the year :).
One of the main reasons the Greens argue for some decent energy efficiency in this country is to avoid these periodic energy panics.
The model that the likes of MEUG seem to be happy with is one in which everyone consumes power like mad, interspersed with these occasional furious bursts of harsh cut-backs. Please over-consume most of the time, but be prepared to put up with short bursts of stressful conservation.
Wouldn’t the Green model be better? Facilitate the entire population’s ability to be energy efficient so that the overall amount of energy (and environmental damage) needed to achieve the same amount of modern living is less. Only consume what we really need, all of the time, and avoid these occasional shortfalls.
Cos, guess what? An insulated house is toastier, a solar water heater will make your bath too hot if you let it and an eco-bulb throws the same shadows.
But all require widespread personal infrastructure investment which, because power is still relatively cheap most of the time, seem to need to be at least initially kick-started by the Government. It is not really in the energy companies’ interest to make, for instance, solar water heaters affordable for everyone.
Curiously, however, it may well be in the MUEG’s interest for the populace to be less dependent on the grid. Maybe they should help make the Greens’ energy policy reality.
The Greens are the only party with an energy plan that will allow everyone to enjoy clean, natural beaches, rivers and air, AND have hot water for a shower when they get home, for all time. No sitting around in the dark required.
December 12th, 2005 at 2:05 pm
did you get out the wrong side of bed yesterday frog?
surely you should be giving credit where credit’s due and congratulating big business for calling for energy efficiency.
Surely a link to jeanette’s energy saving tips is in order
http://www.greens.org.nz/campaigns/energy/save-energy.htm
December 12th, 2005 at 4:38 pm
As an engineering professional involved in the industry, I can only add my wholehearted confirmation of the insanity of the so-called “market reforms”. The NZ Electricity Wholesale Market is an absolute joke. It is only operates to permit the private investors to make as much short term profit as possible.
I was personally involved in the commissioning of the Whirinaki project, and I can assure you that one evening some weeks BEFORE it was officially opened, it was put online for about 20min, in order to avoid power cuts in the North Is. because other operators KNEW the capacity was there. It is USED by the other generators to ensure the spot price will rise to a firm level that they can all profit from…all they do is leave offline just enough capacity to force Whirinaki to run, and they all enjoy the $300/MW spot price that results.
From an engineering perspective the entire generation and transmsion system should be operated as a single entity…splitting it up into commercial interests with non-alinged goals is just insanity.
December 12th, 2005 at 4:59 pm
Geez Logix - I thought I had left the Enron effect in California. - BJ
December 12th, 2005 at 11:57 pm
Logix, you should talk to my nephew… he designed the “wholesale electricity market” of Singapore…
… yes, he needs talking to.
December 15th, 2005 at 10:25 am
I agree with froggy,
…but you see logix this (precisely) is the wisdom of “the market” - You can’t ever claim the market isn’t working (it’s all a bit like the pseudo science of Freud) if we all end up having cold showers next winter (I won’t because I’ve got a nice big Solahart unit on my roof providing me with free hot water) that will be a “market signal” - then of course there will then be a big rush on solar hot water systems. The market is working…
My apologies, this is what happens when you’ve been arguing with libertarians. ( http://ontic.blogspot.com/ ) The market, like god works in mysterious ways, but you have to keep the faith. Sometimes god (um, i mean the market) just wants us to have cold showers.
I think New Zealanders, mostly clueless in regard to energy, need to be shocked into change. A freezing cold shower on a Wellington winter morning might just be the trick. Although I doubt it.
Within this “rational” world in which we all live, the system dictates that we defer action or recognition of future options until a crisis is so clear and evident that it becomes detectable through market and monetary mechanisms, by which time in reality, it is mostly too late.