KEY POINTS:
The draft New Zealand Energy Strategy is dominated by the Government's conviction that climate change (more properly described as "man-made global warming") is happening and that we must develop renewable energy to save New Zealand from disaster.
The strategy ignores the uncertainties in the evidence claimed to support
the belief that man-made global warming is real and dangerous. It cannot explain why, before the days of man-made CO2, the world was warmer during the Middle Ages, Roman and Minoan warm periods. The whole of the Energy Strategy is based on the assumption that the "scenarios" and "projections" of dangerous warming generated by unproven climate models are accurate predictions.
The surface temperature record used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows that the world has not warmed since 1998. If cooling continues for a few more years then the hypothesis, the theories and the computer models supporting claims that CO2 causes dangerous man-made global warming, will have to be re-examined.
The strategy ignores the increasingly strong evidence that solar emissions related to the sunspot cycle and cosmic rays have a major influence on our climate. Unlike the carbon dioxide driven hypothesis, this theory explains climate change in the past and predicts that the climate will cool until 2030.
One proven effect of increased CO2 is that it has enhanced plant growth by about 15 per cent. To an agricultural nation like New Zealand, this provides a significant economic benefit. Why is it ignored?
It seems to me that the Government has been badly advised. The primary duty of any scientific adviser is to report on the science objectively and to make sure that the politicians understand the uncertainties in the science.
It is for the politicians to decide how they will handle the uncertainties. Many climate scientists and other advisers have taken it upon themselves to hide the uncertainties from the politicians and to put forward supposition as fact. This is wrong and risky. For them and the nation.
A comprehensive and objective investigation into the credibility of the science underlying the hypothesis that man-made carbon dioxide causes dangerous global warming is urgently needed.
The primary aim of the National Energy Strategy should be to ensure that New Zealand has a reliable and economic supply of energy. This we can easily get from our huge reserves of coal. An alternative is nuclear power which has been endorsed by the IPCC.
There is one thing we can be absolutely sure of: no one can predict exactly where our energy resources will come from in 50 years time - any more than they could have done so in 1906 when Henry Ford said: "If I had asked people what they wanted, it would have been faster horses."
History teaches us that human ingenuity and technology have the potential to provide sufficient energy for our needs. All that is needed to make sure that this happens is good science and common sense. The strategy lacks both.
The National Energy Strategy must be developed on a rational basis. It must recognise that meeting our legitimate needs for energy is important; minimising damage to our economy is important; and, most of all, it is important that we know exactly what it might be costing us - or what we are giving up - in order to meet the Government's obsession with dangerous man-made global warming and renewables.
Unless this is done, the strategy will turn out to be yet another expensive, misleading and futile exercise.
The strategy assumes an unrealistically low load growth for electricity and projects that only 1200MW of new capacity using fossil fuels will be needed by 2030. It ignores the need to replace at least 3000MW of existing thermal stations. If, as it predicts, the percentage of energy supplied by wind and wave power increases from 300MW to 6000MW (20 per cent more than all our hydro stations) we will need additional thermal power stations to back up this unpredictable supply in calm conditions.
The predicted increase in wind generation is huge. Laid out in a line the wind turbines would stretch for 700km. Lots of new transmission lines would also be needed. Most of these wind farms will need to be in the North Island - along with the 4000MW or so of thermal backup plant. It will be the consumers who will pay for all this backup. Not the developers of the wind farms.
The strategy ignores the need for 6000MW to 8000MW of new fossil fuel plant. Not a word on where it will be, what it will burn and how much it will cost. All this wind and wave generation, transmission and backup plant will be far more expensive than a nuclear station north of Auckland.
There is no justification for excluding consideration of nuclear power in the New Zealand Energy Strategy and a recent TV poll shows that more than 3 per cent of New Zealanders agree.
The strategy makes much of biofuels even though all the evidence points to the fact that growing crops to make biofuels is bad for the environment, deprives people of much needed food and in most cases does nothing to reduce carbon emissions. The only beneficiaries are those that grow rich on the billions of dollars in subsidies paid for biofuel production.
New Zealand would be better off without a strategy than it would be with the one outlined in "Powering Our Future".
Support for it comes from those who believe that economic development is incompatible with the environment, those who see it as a way of making profits from carbon trading, those (like Al Gore and his Generation Investment Management company) who are pushing heavily subsidised renewable energy projects and those academics that see it as a bottomless source of research money and an excellent way of getting recognition, promotion and income.
The Government sees it as a way of making even higher windfall profits from Meridian and Mighty River Power and gaining votes and exerting more control over the economy and our lives. And no one shows any concern for domestic and industrial consumers who will pay more and more for an increasingly unreliable power supply.
* Bryan Leyland is a power engineer and consultant.