If The Government Really Wants To Lower Power Bills, This Is The Way
Te Pāti Māori Co-Leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer says the government’s LNG announcement today exposes a fundamental failure of energy policy leadership.
“Simeon Brown says he has an answer to our energy security problem. A billion-dollar contract to import liquefied natural gas. From the Middle East. With no plan to pay for it. That’s not energy security, that’s energy dependency,” says Ngarewa-Packer.
“Initially the government planned a levy on power bills to fund this facility. Now they want the same gentailers, companies they’ve spent three years refusing to regulate, to voluntarily fund something those same companies say they don’t need. Meridian said it publicly. They don’t need this terminal.
“So the government is going to sign us up to international gas prices we cannot control, on infrastructure we don’t own, to solve a problem the industry says doesn’t exist. And they’ll work out who pays later.
“New Zealand already generates over 80% of its electricity from renewables. We sit on some of the best geothermal resource in the world. We have rivers, wind, sun. We have iwi and communities ready to build and own local generation right now.
“The dry year problem is real. But the answer is not to plant a gas terminal on our coastline and pray the Strait of Hormuz stays open.
“Invest in storage and demand flexibility so we’re not at the mercy of hydro levels. Expand geothermal, we’ve barely scratched the surface. Put real money behind rooftop solar with feed-in tariffs that actually work. Build community microgrids so rural and Māori communities stop being the last served and first cut off. Use the leverage we already have, the gentailers are state-owned, direct them to treat dry year risk as a public obligation, not a profit line.
“Energy that belongs here. Generation we control. Prices we’re not hostage to. And when the next dry year hits, it won’t be our communities paying the price again.
