 | The Bullroarer - Wednesday 5 March 2008 | TOD: Australia/New Zealand | A Sustainable Futures Fund for a Fuel and Climate Emergency |  |
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I think it's feasible.
Remember that NZ is a country with a small population and a long coastline running roughly north-south in the "roaring forties" of latitude, so they've a lot of potential for wind, and if wave can be made commercially-viable, that too.
Their current power stations are,
- Coal-fired, 1,000MW, plus Gas-fired, 385MW, both at Huntly
- Geothermal, 400MW at Wairakei (though declining, since it's been going since 1958), and 90MW under construction at Kawerau
- Hydroelectric, 4,450MW (I think) across the country. This is pretty much maxed out.
- Wind, 322MW total at 8 different locations, 165MW under construction
In terms of delivered energy, NZ is about 68% renewable already. To hit 90% all they need to do is build a few thousand MW of wind, which as I said is quite doable. And really, with a well-managed national grid, they could be 100% renewable.
Of course, a "well-managed national grid" apparently is a big ask. There was a fortnight of power out in Auckland a few years back... four big lines went into the city, they were old and poorly-maintained, one went down so the idiots just put the same amount of total power through the other three, those heated up so a second one went down, and so on.
Of course they could also do some electricity conservation. They generate 42 billion kWhr, and have 4.1 million people, so that's basically 10,000kWh annually. Looking at the list of countries and their production (usually about the same as consumption) here, we see that NZ is 14th highest in the world. Considering that countries like Denmark use about 8,000kWh, Germany 7,000kWh and so on - well, I reckon they could cut back a bit without descending into dark impoverished misery.
Wow. NZ is so far ahead of us :-(
Well, they got a head start in many ways because of their unique geology and geography.
Their geology gave them a lot of hot steam rising to the surface already, so it seemed only logical to tap it, then go looking for more.
Their geology and geography combined means they have a lot of hills and mountains. Their geography means they get a lot of rainfall. Thus, many rivers they can dam up.
And their geography of being a landmass running north-south along the Roaring Forties gives them enormous wind power potential.
Whereas Australia doesn't have the obvious geothermal potential - it's there, but not bursting out of the ground saying "use me!" the way it did for the Kiwis, nor as many rivers, so not as much hydro potential. We've obvious solar potential, but solar got developed later than hydro and geothermal did. So even if each country had jumped on technologies the instant they appeared, we'd still be behind the kiwis.
Which is why we need to make a bigger effort in the rugby.
NZ also has a lot of ocean power potential (returning to my current monomania).
We have more solar resource than anyone (per capita) though - we should be generating half our power from CSP one day (with plenty of thermal energy storage built in to the plants).