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submitted 1 week ago by Dave@lemmy.nz to c/politics@lemmy.nz

My biased quotes:

The government says a Liquefied Natural Gas import facility in Taranaki will save New Zealanders about $265 million a year.

Energy Minister Simon Watts on Monday announced a contract was expected to be signed by the middle of the year, with construction finishing next year or early 2028.

"We need to get rid of the dry risk," Luxon told reporters on Monday.

"I'm not going to guarantee, based on the advice I've been given the benefits outweigh the costs."

A factsheet supplied by the government said the infrastructure costs would be paid for through a levy on electricity of between $2 and $4 /MWh.

The facility was expected to cut future prices by at least $10/MWh, and curb an expected 1.25 percent reduction in Gross Domestic Product from higher energy prices.

Procurement started in October in response to the independent Frontier report, which the government largely rejected.

The government largely rejected the recommendations of the review carried out by Frontier Economics, with sector players including Simon Bridges criticising a lack of bold action.

"It would make no economic sense to develop an LNG import terminal to meet just dry year risk as the large fixed costs would be spread over a relatively small amount of output," the Frontier report said.

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[-] MadPsyentist@lemmy.nz 5 points 1 week ago

As Chippy mentions in another article about this gas port. "$1,000,000,000 buys a hell of a lot of solar panels and batteries."

[-] MadPsyentist@lemmy.nz 2 points 1 week ago

Here is a video by Alec of technology connections talking about a simple solar farm in Illinois.

Yes it is an hour and a half long, just watch the first 30mins or so if ya want. The last 30mins are about USA falling apart at the seams, good but not relevent to the power discusion.

[-] Viper_NZ@lemmy.nz 4 points 1 week ago

Why in God's name is the levy on electricity and not on gas?

[-] Dave@lemmy.nz 2 points 1 week ago

Although it mentions residential supply, the core intent seems to be that it's for power plants in dry years (when we can't rely on hydro).

Weird to use the weather as an excuse for not using the money for solar or wind power. Like, it's too sunny this year so we need gas, because if it was too wet then surely it wouldn't be a dry year...

[-] Dave@lemmy.nz 3 points 1 week ago

Basically, government ignores advice, buys up huge amounts of LPG, this could cut the price on your power bill by up to $10/MWh which is 1 cent per KWh - paid for with a levy on your power bill.

[-] absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz 3 points 1 week ago

I was recently (last week) talking with a colleague about this; he is currently working on 3 major grid scale solar installations (60, 160 and 200MW); I asked what is the current cost per MW onto the grid at scale.

His response, was after about 50MW you are looking at $1M/MW; that is connected to the grid with all the bits required to supply power into the national grid.

You will conservatively achieve 2000 MWh/MW installed per year.

So for a billion dollars, we could get something like 2 TWh/year installed.

In a dry year, that is 2+ TWh not pulled from a lake.

this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
3 points (100.0% liked)

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