The party’s policy would require decisions on resource consents for non-hydro renewable generation within one year of application, speeding up consenting timeframes.
The party wants to fix this through two National Policy Statements under the Resource Management Act - the same instrument the Government has used to speed up the consenting of three-storey townhouses in urban areas.
National would issue a National Policy Statement on Renewable Electricity Generation (NPS-REG) within a year of taking office.
It would make solar, wind, geothermal and biomass a controlled activity under the Resource Management Act, requiring councils to update their plans to make consents for these generation types near-automatic. The document would outline the conditions that may be attached to new consents.
Provided those conditions are met, consents cannot be declined. The consents would lapse after 10 years if they are not used, rather than five years under the current rules giving businesses more time to use them.
It would also increase the minimum duration of consents for all renewables, including hydro, to 35 years to increase investment certainty and reduce cost.
About 40 per cent of all renewable generation must be reconsented in the next decade, adding cost. The policy statement would set a one-year limit to re-consent existing generation assets, including hydro, speeding up re-consenting.
Increasing electricity use for electrification will not just require more generation - it will need more transmission to get the electricity from where it is generated to where it is used.
National said it would publish another National Policy Statement for this - a National Policy Statement – Distribution.
This would make it easier to build infrastructure, including poles, lines, transformers and substations.
They said this document would eliminate consents for upgrades to existing transmission and local lines infrastructure, within limits. It would require consents for transmission and local lines to be issued in one year, increase durations to 35 years, and set minimum lapse times to 10 years.
National also promised to amend the Commerce Act to “provide greater certainty around cost recovery for regulated infrastructure: and “introduce options to manage first mover disadvantage for new connections to local lines, including claw back rules to allow first movers (such as new EV charging stations that pay 100 per cent of the upfront cost of lines upgrades) to recover a share of those costs from future connections to that infrastructure”.
They would also “introduce an information disclosure regime under the Commerce Commission to monitor connection costs for local lines” to “ensure costs are reasonable and avoid gold plating”.
The policy is designed to take a swing at Labour’s RMA reforms, which have been accused of not adequately speeding up consenting and reducing cost - although the Government says the scheme, which dramatically reduces the number of plans produced by councils, will speed up consents and reduce costs.
It also takes a swing at the Government’s Lake Onslow “battery” scheme, which is designed to help New Zealand reach 100 per cent renewable generation by creating a large renewable “battery” in the South Island. This would be used when renewable generation is low, solving the dry year problem, when hydro-electricity generation is low.
