How Govt plans to meet 100% renewable electricity goal
The government is defending its 100 per cent renewable electricity target against criticism that it risks distracting efforts from cheaper and larger emission reduction efforts elsewhere.
Energy and Resources Minister Megan Woods says the government’s 2035 electricity goal is “ambitious” but necessary if the country is to meet its netzero carbon target by 2050.
The government is looking at other sectors for emissions reduction, including industrial process heat which accounts for 27 per cent of all energy-related emissions, she said.
“Reducing emissions from the process heat sector depends on a secure, affordable and low-emission electricity system,” she told Parliament’s economic development, science and innovation select committee yesterday.
“Some of the most important innovation work we have to do is in market innovation in order to make this work — hydrogen will be really important.”
New Zealand’s electricity system is already more than 80 per cent renewable. The Interim Climate Change Committee, which delivered its assessment of the 100 per cent target to the government on April 30, noted in February that the electricity sector appeared on track to be 93 per cent renewable by 2035.
The committee said then that were “much more significant” emissionsavings available in other sectors than pursuing the remaining 7 per cent. While new storage technologies were developing, it said that trying to cover dry-years without using gas or coal-fired back-up generation would be prohibitively expensive.
Woods made no reference to the committee’s report — originally planned for publication in April — except to say it was being held back for release with the government’s response.
“It’s not far off. It’s certainly something that I would expect in the coming weeks and months,” she told MPs.
Power prices surged late last year when unplanned maintenance work at the Pohokura gas field, the country’s largest, coincided with planned work at the Kupe gas field and declining South Island hydro storage.
Emissions also soared as Genesis Energy was forced to import coal to keep the lights on, and coal-fired generation in the March quarter was the highest in almost six years, according to government data.
Committee chairman Jonathan Young, also National’s energy spokesperson,
challenged Woods on both the capital cost of expanding the country’s renewable fleet to cover winter power demand without gas-fired supplies and the inherent intermittency of wind generation.
Wind generation the day before, one of the coldest this year, had fallen to just 4 per cent of capacity, he noted.
Woods countered that there are plenty of days which are windy and sunny. The falling cost of battery storage and hydrogen production will enable the country to take advantage of those resources, but the country may also need to shift the use of hydro assets to more of a storage role,
she said. Geothermal is also an important and growing base-load power source.
“Nobody is thinking about moving to a renewable future that doesn’t have storage absolutely at its heart,” she said.
The government is funding a range of hydrogen trials and is planning to release a discussion paper “very shortly” outlining its potential challenges and opportunities, she said.
Hydrogen is benefiting from huge international investment to see if its manufacture from water and electricity can be made cost-competitive.