Push for New Zealand energy efficiency by 2025

Ambitious goal to save 55 times Nelson's annual power usage within five yearsHouseholders, businesses and the public service will be encouraged to help make New Zealand as energy-efficient as its OECD partners, a pair of updated government strategies reveal.

The Draft New Zealand Energy Strategy sticks to the Labour Government's 2007 target of having 90 per cent of the country's electricity generated from renewable sources by 2025, but acknowledges non-renewable energy would be used to guarantee security of supply.

The Draft Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy proposes what Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee called an "ambitious but achievable" target to save 55 petajoules (PJ) of energy by 2015, to lift the country's energy efficiency savings closer to the OECD average. In 2008, Nelson consumed slightly more than 1PJ (278GWh) a year.

The draft expects householders to save four times that, for business to save 21PJ and the transport sector to save 29PJ.

The public sector will reduce its per-head energy consumption by 10 per cent on 2008 levels.

Releasing the drafts for public comment, Mr Brownlee said such savings would accelerate New Zealand's rate of energy intensity improvement from a rate of 1 per cent a year to 1.2 per cent.

Better conservation and efficiency would enhance productivity, improve energy security, reduce energy bills and improve the health and wellbeing of households, he said.

The drafts update the last government's strategies, adopted in 2008, to reflect the Government's policy programme and a raft of recent reforms.

The strategies focused on energy security and affordability, and recognised the need for environmental responsibility and reducing energy-related greenhouse gas emissions as per the ETS, Mr Brownlee said.

Green Party co-leader Russel Norman and Labour Party associate energy spokesman Chris Hipkins acknowledged the strategies retained the aspirational goal of the last government, but said they were both very thin on concrete actions.

Dr Norman said there were no action plans: they were devalued, "high-level waffle".

Mr Brownlee said the draft strategies were not action plans and the old strategies, with their accent on near-term goals, were quickly out of date.

- OTAGO DAILY TIMES