The Climate Chap: What’s wrong with solar?

27 June, 2022

The day I’ve been long waiting for finally arrived on Monday May 16 with the publication of our Government’s actual plans to reduce nasty emissions between now and 2035, only a year after our wonderful Climate Change Commission produced its wide-ranging recommendations. Better late than never.

This publication, ‘Towards a productive, sustainable and inclusive economy: Aotearoa New Zealand’s First Emissions Reduction Plan’ comes in two flavours – a 12-page at-a-glance summary, and the full report weighing in at a truly heavyweight 348 pages.

The summary gives me confidence that the Government is serious about meeting the climate crisis challenge, especially having 100 percent renewable power by 2035. The 348 pages is however light on specifics and has a few gimmicks such as a trial scheme to get a few fiscally-challenged voters into cheap EVs.

However, much to my amazement the report has a blind spot: Solar.

I love home solar and installed a reliable system over 10 years ago. No problems and a decent monthly saving. Sadly, we are just about the only country that has never promoted nor subsidised solar. This is even more surprising when EV cars are highly represented in the report and the preferred approach being home based charging. Using solar therefore achieves the goals of inexpensive home power, cheap and overnight EV charging, and adding the surplus power back to the grid and getting a small credit, usually 8c per kWh. As the power companies charge around the 28c per kwh they are effectively making a 20c per kwh profit on the power us solar freaks generate on their behalf.

In the 348 pages I was expecting home solar, as well as industrial solar farms, to feature heavily. Guess how often the word “solar” is mentioned? Let me give you a clue: Between four and six!

Simply, it seems the Government doesn’t want to know, and presumably the only reason can be to avoid the electricity companies having competition. Indeed, most solar users subscribe to “low cost” monthly packages from the power retailers as they generated the bulk of their power and only need top-ups. The Government has introduced legislation to raise the monthly usage fee, around $10 each year for the next five years, therefore low-cost users will soon be paying $60 each month in addition to per kWh charges. The Government has also demanded that retailers no longer offer prompt payment discounts. Interesting times.

The report also confirms that we will ‘develop an energy strategy by the end of 2024’. With 2050 less than 28 years away, and large-scale electricity projects frequently taking up to 15 years to be operational, one would have hoped that by now we would have already had strategies locked down.

Fortunately, renewables already account for 84 percent of our electricity with gas and coal the rest. Hydro accounts for over 60 percent which is super until you realise that many of our hydro stations are already well over 50 years old and some will inevitably not make it to 2050.

Come 2050 we will need at least twice the electricity currently generated. Coal will have been discontinued, some hydro stations obsoleted, with a new fleet of EV vehicles to power, and industry standardising on electricity. Plus the biggie – that our population will have increased by 20 percent. Add in a 20 percent contingency for growth and undertaking plant maintenance just to be safe. And yet we will not have an energy strategy until 2025.

Much is made of the benefits of wind and solar, but more bad news. With every nation on the planet also committing to wind and solar there is totally inadequate manufacturing capacity to meet the demand. This was the case before the tragic war in Ukraine, but Europe has now vastly accelerated its demand and commitment to renewables. More hydro, and maybe nuclear and tidal schemes remain available to us. However, it is looking unlikely that we will be able to install sufficient industrial wind and solar sites in time.

So, in the meantime, what’s wrong with having solar panels on the roof as your personal power station? It should be a win-win for you and the country, and worth far more than five words!

New Zealand is just about the only country that has never promoted nor subsidised solar.