NRT: This is what happens if you don’t have a plan

Written By: - Date published: 3:23 pm, April 26th, 2016 - 4 comments
Categories: climate change, energy, global warming, national, sustainability - Tags: , , ,

I/S at No Right Turn on the renewables target and futility of targets without plans:

This is what happens if you don’t have a plan

Radio New Zealand reports today that the electricity industry thinks the government’s 90% renewables target is “unrealistic” and will not be met. This has been apparent for years. In 2010, the government’s Energy Outlook – its modelling of electricity supply and demand to predict future needs – showed that we were never going to meet that target, and this was repeated in its draft 2015 generation and demand scenarios. And the reason is simple: because while the government set a target, it had no plan whatsoever to reach it. Instead, it relied on the market, which (while its moving in the right direction) is moving much slower than expected.

If the government was serious about this target, it would have backed it with policies: a thermal ban, a higher carbon price to drive existing thermal generation out of the market, mandatory renewables certificates to provide an additional revenue stream, or feed-in tariffs for wind to provide security for investment. Instead, they rolled back those policies, revoking the thermal ban and crippling the ETS. To the extent we’ve had progress at all, its only because Tiwai Point is threatening to shut down – and that’s a mixed blessing because it has also stalled new investment.

But the fundamental problem is that the government doesn’t care. Sure, they’ll set a renewables target – but like their climate change targets, it’ll be far in the future, when current Ministers expect to no longer be in government and therefore cannot be held to account for their failure to meet it. IBGYBG – and someone else will be left to clean up their mess.

climate change cycle of fail

4 comments on “NRT: This is what happens if you don’t have a plan ”

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  1. Draco T Bastard 1
    26 April 2016 at 5:11 pm

    If the government was serious about this target, it would have backed it with policies: a thermal ban, a higher carbon price to drive existing thermal generation out of the market, mandatory renewables certificates to provide an additional revenue stream, or feed-in tariffs for wind to provide security for investment.

    Well, the could do that – or they could just go and build the stuff needed to go full renewable. That includes building the factories to produce the photovoltaic cells and wind turbines and the R&D to develop them.

    The best idea would be to develop the entire production process from extraction of resources, processing those resources and then producing the end product.

    Yes, we can afford to do this as all I’m talking about is utilising our own resources.

  2. Bill 2
    26 April 2016 at 6:08 pm

    Christ. There’s a fucking carbon budget; the amount of CO2 that can be emitted while leaving any chance of ducking +2 degrees. The reality of that carbon budget dictates that NZ, along with every other fucking country in the west, cuts energy related CO2 emissions by ~15% every year until there are zero emissions from energy (ie, by about 2030). (The agricultural/energy mix for NZ emissions has got sweet fuck all impact on that necessity btw)

    The market won’t produce that outcome – we know this. The state (if political party conversations/exchanges are anything to go by) won’t produce that outcome – we should, by now, know this too.

    So, if we want that outcome; if you want that outcome, then wake the fuck up, act up, and help to make it impossible for these fuckers to run their various charades.

    And 98% of those who read this comment just wiped it from their memory…

  3. gsays 3
    27 April 2016 at 8:15 am

    Sub headline could be: what happens when a manager is in charge where a leader should be.

  4. Philj 4
    27 April 2016 at 12:04 pm

    What problem?
    Try contacting xyz
    There isn’t any evidence.
    It’s not obvious.
    We’ll look into it.
    We’ll call for a report
    We’ll get an independent expert
    We have no hard data
    We need clear information
    We cannot do anything without hard data
    There is not a quick fix, this issue existed before our time
    We don’t have unlimited funds
    Increase in funding will not solve this issue
    We are proactively going to do something
    We will talk to the stakeholders.
    The stakeholders seek clarity from the Government about its plans.
    Government contacts polling agency seeking measurement of the issues significance
    On pollsters results Government decides whether there is an issue or not.
    What problem…