“We are takers not market-makers in the great global energy game.”
That is the reality which always leads New Zealand to tread the same well-worn track: a wash-and-repeat energy supply crisis which stuns households, reboots inflation, stifles growth and investment, snuffs out jobs and halts opportunity.
Yet it’s a game which New Zealand doesn’t need to be in.
Thanks to the policies of successive governments ever since fossil fuel became drink-of-the-day, New Zealand has been in thrall to Big Oil, Big Politics and Big Money.
Needlessly. The Sun, the wind, the water, the tides, geothermal heat and the newest renewable battery storage all offer tariff-free constantly-renewable power to energize every energy-powered system that both this society and the economy need.
Whether it’s for transport, dairy farming, horticulture, forestry, steel-making, building, fishing whatever.
Renewable energy is only an investment opportunity away.
And, with batteries that energy is particularly available, as government ministers constantly repeat to frighten the horses “when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.”
A few free thinkers have realised this mantra has been used to hide a profound truth: New Zealand needs to take back its energy sovereignty and the sooner the better when price and shortage are so dominant.
Sovereignty has a distinct meaning.
As Google’s AI explains:
“Sovereignty is the supreme and absolute power and authority of a state to govern itself, manage its own territory and make laws without external interference. Sovereignty is an independent nation’s right to self-determination and control over its affairs.”
This definition makes it clear that New Zealand has no energy sovereignty.
But it is a critical issue with a readily-bankable solution if our leaders think about it.
Government at the national and local level can issue simple permits to allow solar, wind, geothermal, water to be energised to make renewable, storable, continuous energy. (storable: able to be kept or preserved, often without degradation or spoilage).
That is all government needs to do to flip the switch. Entrepreneurial investors can do the rest, given minor inducements and proper regulatory guidance.
This would allow them to create a controlled marketplace, not the price/rent-taking model currently in place in New Zealand, created in the 1990s by government to benefit only the shareholders: of which they are one.
New Zealanders face another winter of energy discontent, as prices spike for all forms of energy.
Yet the solution is in community hands. Investing in and installing a range of renewables can and will cut the Gordian Knot strangling the country’s
energy sovereignty.
Bold policy decisions, however, could take it back into this nation’s sovereign control.
One result which would flow from significant investment in renewable energy projects would be real and substantial savings for all sectors of the economy particularly households.
That must be tempting during an energy supply and pricing crisis.
Case for Energy Sovereignty
MAIN RESULT OF THE OIL SUPPLY SHOCK:
“ASB estimates the average household is paying an extra $55 a week – a total of perhaps $4 billion being siphoned straight out of New Zealand and into the bank accounts of international oil companies.”
