Pouring cold water on irrigation
New Zealand’s regions, including the Kaikoura Electorate, are clearly being marked by the Government as a source to find money to fill their budget hole, by not doing work that is needed, and backing out of projects.
A good example is the funding cut to irrigation, which is vital to this region.
For the Hurunui Water Scheme, the Government’s funding cut means the scale of the planned infrastructure will be constrained. Where they could have made provision for irrigating an extra 3000 hectares, which they do not have commitments for at this stage, they now cannot.
Irrigation contributes $2.2 billion to the national economy and schemes should be viewed as national infrastructure.
The Government also seems to have forgotten that what it puts into irrigation schemes comes back many times over in the form of excise tax, GST and personal or company taxes – money which would have helped to address their budget issues.
A good example is the irrigation scheme in Waipara, which cost $5.7 million to build. Within 10 years, land that was irrigated by the scheme was returning $5 million in excise tax alone, not counting GST, personal and company taxes and the many other financial benefits to the region as a whole.
Another area which the Government has backed out of in a short-sighted move, both economically and environmentally, is oil and gas exploration.
The coal industry will surely be celebrating this news because once our current reserves of oil and gas run out – in 10 years’ time, too soon to reach 100% renewable energy generation – we will have no choice but to burn coal to keep up with energy demands, creating twice the emissions.
Currently, 20 per cent of national power generation relies on gas and shutting off the potential to source it does not solve any problems. It merely shifts them elsewhere.
Our own Huntly Power Station will have to think twice about its intentions to withdraw its coalburning electricity generators by the end of this year, which would be replaced with gas-fuelled units and move the New Zealand electricity sector closer to its 90% renewable target.
The fact is, we need energy and we’re going to need more of it as we shift towards environmentally friendly solutions like electric cars. But until we reach 100% renewable power generation that is sufficiently robust to support ever-increasing demand, the only solution is to use natural gas, which is significantly cleaner to burn than coal.
Internationally, we are already seeing a growing reliance on coal for thermal power generation, which flies in the face of moves towards reducing carbon emissions.
Japan has been criticised for it, as well as China which is building a new coal fired power station every 12 days.
Natural gas, in this instance, would be a far cleaner fuel to use until their renewable energy production matches demand.
Unfortunately, without exploration, New Zealand will not be able to be part of the solution to this problem.