The unspeakable option omitted from the Climate Change Commission's ambitions
OPINION: Centrally planned government programmes that direct an economy to deliver political objectives have nasty unintended consequences. Last week, the Climate Commission outlined its ambitious programme to direct the economy to deliver the political objective of reducing carbon emissions. The Commissions report proposes radical changes to the way our economy and society functions and is both remarkably optimistic on the costs of this transition and largely silent on the risks of such a major overhaul. There is no better example than in the Commissions approach to electric vehicles and the electricity infrastructure required to power them. Currently there are just over 20,000 electric vehicles on our roads while the national fleet is over 4 million . Without government interference, the demand for Telsas and Leafs will continue to grow. Those responsible for managing and maintaining our transmission and distribution assets will begin upgrading capacity in anticipation of future demand. Indeed, Transpower has already begun this process . READ MORE: * How to cut emissions from transport: ban fossil fuel cars, electrify transport and get people walking and cycling * Australia a handbrake on clean car ambitions * 'Not transformational': climate commission's blueprint disappoints green activists * 'The Government will not hold back': Jacinda Ardern on how NZ could go zero carbon However, the Commission has proposed banning the importing of non-electric vehicles as soon as 2030 nine years away. It has also proposed the gradual dismantling of our natural gas networks, shifting more load towards electricity. We typically import 150,000 cars annually. The strain on our electrical infrastructure of both the increase in electric vehicles and shift away from reticulated gas will require a great leap forward not only in the capacity of electricity transmission and distribution but also in generation. The Commissions report is silent on the level of capital required and simply assumes, Continuing to build new electricity generation and transmission infrastructure throughout the 2020s would avoid construction bottlenecks and potential delays... I am not going to predict what the unintended consequences of forcing a massive change on the fleet and electrical demands on our existing network could be. But when bureaucrats demand the impossible, things go wrong. Our cities run on electricity and our vehicle fleet is powered by a vast amount of imported fuel. The Commission is proposing to impose a massive top-down alteration on these vital components of our economy and society in a very tight time-frame. It has not done anywhere enough research to understand how this is going to work. It will not work. The system will break and it will break in unexpected and unpredictable ways, just as it did in 1998 when Auckland experienced five weeks of rolling blackouts that reduced the city to an eerie silence. But even if we can bring power to the people, where will this power come from? Over 80 per cent of our energy comes from renewables hydro mostly. The problem with getting electricity from dams is that sometimes it does not rain. We solve this problem by having a reserve capacity of coal and natural gas. The Commission wants to phase out coal-fired generation, which means Huntly's units - which currently burn natural gas and coal - will need to run solely on natural gas. Huntly is the back-stop of our electricity network. When we have a dry winter we use Huntly to keep the lights on. Literally. We have an abundance of coal while our gas fields are ageing and mostly off-shore. Restricting our back-up generation capacity to gas only is not without risks, especially as this government has put an end to future offshore oil and gas exploration. The Commissions own analysis confirms , However hydro lakes only hold enough generation (storage) for a few weeks of winter electricity demand if inflows (rain and snow melt) are very low ... and the electricity system relies more heavily on fossil fuel generation to meet electricity demand. Our main hydro lakes are in the South Island. Most of our population is not. As we have yet to perfect super-conductors there is substantial electricity loss in getting kilowatts across the Cook Strait. Given this, you would hope that the Commission had a credible plan to generate enough juice to keep the country running. Readers, it does not. Wind and solar are going to emerge from their current five per cent of the nations generation to a third. Not only is this unrealistic, it does not solve the dry year problem, as the Commissions report concedes . But these are minor critiques compared to the larger failure of this report. We are committed to net zero emissions of long-lived gas and cutting methane by as much as 47 per cent by 2050. New Zealand is leading the world in reducing carbon emissions in the same way we led the world in female suffrage. Fine. Just because something is hard, does not mean that we should not do it. The stakes are incredibly high and there is some value in providing moral leadership. I have been convinced that carbon emissions pose an existential threat to our way of living. But we should be honest about the costs and the risks. The claim by the Commission that the overall costs of meeting the countrys targets and our proposed emissions budgets are estimated at less than 1 per cent of projected annual GDP is remarkably optimistic. Regulation is about forcing individuals to act counter to the way they would if left undisturbed. It comes with both the direct costs of paying the regulators and the opportunity cost of diverted economic activity. It seems the Commission has done no research on the economic dead-weight-loss of its proposals nor on the risks inherent in such a major re-working of our economy. Which brings me the largest failure of this report. The real inconvenient truth. That of nuclear energy. A topic so fraught the report failed to mention it. Before we commit to re-engineering our economy in such a way that it might conceivably fail, those proposing the change have a moral duty to consider all the options and put them before the public. What are the risks? What are the benefits? Are we simply refusing to face this option because it is politically unpalatable, or are the challenges in our geologically unstable land too great? The world and nuclear technology has evolved since David Langes uranium moment. We are living with new threats and evolving technologies. Failing to even consider the nuclear alternative raises in the mind of a reasonable person the possibility that this report is driven by ideology and not an objective analysis underpinned by scientific enquiry.