Danielle Uniza, Policy Manager, Infrastructure New Zealand.
The pattern repeats everywhere you look. Consenting favours whatever generation technology can get through the process fastest, not necessarily what the grid will need in 20 years. Businesses weighing up major electrification projects are asked to commit millions without knowing what power will cost, or whether there’ll be enough of it a decade from now. Faced with that kind of uncertainty, you come to realise that waiting is actually just a rational response.
Except the world outside isn’t waiting for us to sort ourselves out. Demand for clean electricity is picking up speed. The data centre recently consented near Invercargill will, on its own, draw power on a scale close to Tiwai Point. Agree with it or not, it’s a signal of where demand is heading and more will inevitably follow. We will continue to be faced with industries looking for abundant, reliable, renewable power – all things we have, or could have more of, if we made a move. What we leave on the table by waiting might be exactly what we need to secure our prosperity.
Energy hungry: Datagrid’s $3.5 billion AI centre in Makarewa, Southland – an artist’s impression. Image / Supplied
This is bigger than an energy story. It’s a question of whether Aotearoa turns one of its best natural advantages into something that lasts and grows, or do we just wait until it’s too late. Cheap, reliable, renewable electricity should be what draws industry here, lifts productivity, and takes some of the weight off households doing the sums each month. None of that happens by accident. It takes a long-term plan, and settings built to carry that plan through.
We recently took a delegation to Norway, where almost every new car sold is electric. In March, only one petrol vehicle was sold in the entire country. Its grid operator, Statnett, is doubling network investment for the decade ahead because it knows, with confidence, that the demand is coming. Denmark tells a similar story. After the oil shocks of the 70s, it was importing almost all of its energy, far behind where New Zealand stood at the time. Now it produces about a fifth more energy than it uses, far outpacing where we are today. Both countries got there not because government built every project, but because it pointed to a horizon and held the settings steady long enough for the system to make it happen.
New Zealand could do the same. We aren’t short on renewable resources, or appetite from investors, or will. What we’re short on is a long-term national energy strategy, a clear destination, backed by the right policies to actually get us there. If we keep waiting for the system to sort itself out, our energy future will not be shaped by deliberate choices. It will be shaped by default.
This doesn’t have to be a waiting game. The system is ready. All that’s missing is the direction and settings that will let us get on with it. It’s time.
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