PANEL DISCUSSION – WHAT WILL POWER YOUR TRANSPORT BUSINESS INTO THE FUTURE?
Liz Yeaman Retyna
According to Liz Yeaman, managing director of Retyna, a specialist consultancy focusing on electric vehicles and renewable energy for transport, New Zealand is good at renewable energy generation.
“Over the past decade, we’ve been at 80% to 85% renewable energy generation. But as things are changing, the cheapest new electricity source in New Zealand is now grid-scale wind and grid-scale solar. So, as we increase electricity demand, which has been static for the past decade – despite population growth, despite us all having more and more screens in every room of our house and everything down to our cigarettes becoming electric – we are now going back into a period of energy-generation growth, and it is going to be coming from grid-scale wind and grid-scale solar.”
Yeaman says New Zealand has a big advantage in renewable energy.
“We have massive resources for it. There are different ways you can take our advantage in renewable energy generation and get it to turn the wheels of the truck. The first of those is battery electric – direct electrification. It’s all made here in New Zealand, which means we are no longer sending money overseas to buy oil to come into this country. This is money that is going to be spent in our local economies rather than coming in from imported oil,” she says.
“One thing about charging batteryelectric trucks is you can do it in your own yards. You can do it when those trucks are not being used – when they are loading and unloading. And you can even generate your own electricity. You can be
involved in creating your own fuel as well as buying it.
“All of those technologies work. They all perform, and they’re really good. The real choice between them comes down to economics – can it do the job, and how cheaply?
“Volvo, Scania and Fuso have been bringing in electric trucks in the past few years. We have big companies like Mainfreight and Toll buying more and more electric trucks at the moment for those urban delivery trips where they can easily make them work with the technology that’s here right now.
“But what we’re not seeing here yet are the trucks that are on the road in the States and in Europe. And the reason that we don’t have them here yet is because there isn’t government policy that is pulling them here. And it’s really important that we look to the future about what’s coming.”
Yeaman says climate change isn’t the only driver behind bringing electric trucks onto the roads. “Obviously, climate is really, really important, but it’s not just governments, but the trucking manufacturing companies themselves are probably the strongest lead into this change in technology,” she says.
“So, if we look at the European truck makers – Volvo and Scania and Mercedes-Benz and so on – they have all come together in Europe and created an alliance and said publicly that they will no longer be producing diesel trucks by 2040. So, this change is coming, and it is being led by the industry as much as the government itself.”
Nicolas Williams Z Energy
Z Energy is looking at all the technologies that may power transport in the future, says Williams.
“We are thinking hard about the rollout, deploying capital, and seeing where the customer demand is,” he says.
“One thing that’s important to note with the technology is how far away is the current technology from its theoretical limit.”
We are seeing really high efficiencies with hydrogen technology, whereas the battery technology and some of the electrical technology have a long way to run. That’s the other thing to think about over the next five to 10 years – how much does technology run to actually improve these chains.
“And then the other consideration is land use. We’re already having debate in New Zealand about our pine trees and the extent to which we are going to take out acreage in New Zealand to sequester carbon. New Zealand doesn’t have a lot of land, and that land is highly contestable in its land use.
“So, one of the things I think we need to be thinking about as a country, and certainly from a policymaker perspective, is how do we make sure that we’re diverting energy into its most efficient kind of use.”
Williams says Z Energy is increasingly seeing that biofuels are struggling to scale. “I can talk a little bit about Z’s approach to biofuels in regard to the mandate. But we’ve obviously tried to do biofuels at a low scale. We couldn’t make it work. So, there’s a really interesting conversation to be had about biofuels and where that fits in the mix.”
“We are looking at all of these technologies. But we are probably looking to deploy capital more in the batteryelectric space and the DC fast-charging space.”
“There are different ways you can take our advantage in renewable energy generation and get it to turn the wheels of the truck.”