Brent Barrett’s Home Planet: The options are here for a new circular economy

Getting a better price for energy being fed into the grid would help us be more energy independent as a nation.

OPINION

Question: Might we all benefit by swapping a few farm animals for more local clean energy and less imported climate pollution?

Today, we overproduce and earn billions of export dollars selling milk and meat. Then we turn around and spend billions of dollars importing coal and oil. Why? So we can burn the oil in our cars and the coal in milk driers so we can buy the coal and oil. It’s the wrong circular economy, driving us deeper into the climate crisis, undermining our future.

Fortunately, the options are here for a new circular economy. One that spirals to help solve the climate crisis, with new links between clean energy, farm revenue diversity, and transport technology. We’re starting to see electricity powering bikes, cars and freight. That will accelerate. Our clean energy options are expanding and diversifying.

Solar electricity is a prime example. Solar tech has been around for years. Long the domain of environmentalists and off-grid innovators, now more and more homes and businesses are putting solar on their roofs, as the economics keep improving.

We’re also seeing bigger solar projects pop up. A private equity group is planning solar farms across 350ha in the northern North Island, blending solar farming with pastoral farming. Here in Palmerston North, Massey University is planning a new solar farm to power over a third of the campus. Its plan has two big pieces. The first is solar covers for its biggest parking facility, allowing the power to go straight into electric bikes and cars. What a great idea!

The other piece is even more exciting. It is literally a solar farm, blending solar panels into a food farm. Energy farming can diversify farm income and create shelter while enabling productive land use for growing plants or animals.

It will be great to get a local look at the integration of solar and food farming when the university project gets up and running.

Right across the motu, we’ve huge potential to expand our clean-energy game beyond the corporate giants selling renewables at industrial scale. The tech exists for every home and commercial building to be an energy generator, working alongside our industrial-scale energy farms, hydro lakes and geothermal to power our nation.

The economics of solar are positive, and should be even better. Successive governments have chosen to prioritise electricity profits over and above the potential for households and communities to enjoy energy independence and resilience. A level price for selling rooftop solar and community-scale generation into the grid is needed to fix that.

Getting a better price for energy being fed into the grid would help us be more energy independent as a nation, and as communities and households. The technology and systems are here to democratise electric power systems, even as our transport moves to electric. This means we can choose to bid adieu to oil imports and to sky-high electricity prices at the same time.

And we’d enjoy the jobs and opportunities offered by more local clean-energy systems, including in our city and farms in the region.

All the pieces are ready to help build a better mix of energy, farming and mobility. A circular economy that spirals up, instead of the downward coal and oil spiral. The economic and environmental benefits are clear. I’m picking a future with fewer farm animals, more solar farms, less imported oil, and less climate pollution.

That’s a good thing for our region, our nation, and our future. How fast we get there depends on how we vote, how we advocate, and how we spend our time and money.

Brent Barrett is an environmental advocate, Green city councillor and scientist. The views expressed here are his own.