NZ Infrastructure Planning: Further Resource Consent Knock Backs For Meridian
November 11th, 2009
If it wasn’t bad enough having Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee blurting his personal opposition to its Mokihinui hydro scheme proposal, Meridian Energy ended another difficult week with the bombshell the Environment Court has overturned the resource consent for Project Hayes. The Hayes project is a massive 630MW proposition in the Lammermoors, Central Otago, and faced big name opposition from the likes of All Black Anton Oliver and Otago landscape artist Graeme Sydney. If approved, it would have been the largest in the Southern Hemisphere and on almost the same scale as Contact Energy’s stalled whopper on the Waikato coast north of Raglan. Project Hayes was initially granted a resource consent in 2007. The judgement is not yet publicly available, but has been described as highly critical of Meridian’s approach to the court action, including the extent of its capacity to answer technical questions relating to the proposal. The NZ Wind Energy Assn’s CEO, Fraser Clark, describes the decision as “concerning.” He says “it seems to raise the bar for assessing renewable energy projects above and beyond the bar for other large scale infrastructure projects. This has the potential to create a far greater loss for all of NZ by hindering the development of other renewable energy schemes.”
The decision has echoes of Meridian’s failure earlier this decade to gain consent for Project Aqua, a 524MW hydro scheme which would have further modified the Waitaki River. Meridian is still pursuing a “son of Aqua” project, the 230MW North Bank Tunnel scheme, which would pipe Waitaki River water through turbines, assist agricultural irrigation in the water-parched region, and return water to the river downstream. Meridian spokesman Alan Seay says the company is “disappointed” at the Environment Court decision and is now studying the 350 page decision carefully and considering “next steps,” which include appeal. Meridian, which has also been forced this year to address bloated head office costs and undergo a restructuring, is under pressure to raise profits while not raising electricity prices, and has recently canned a new customer service system on which it had already spent $20m.
While Brownlee’s disclosure to a Nelson public meeting he personally opposed Meridian’s West Coast Mokihinui scheme was a slip-up, it’s indicative of a wider sense Meridian – a darling of the previous Govt – remains in bad odour with this one. A decision on the proposal is imminent. DoC and the West Coast Regional and Buller District councils were among those who opposed the dam. With decisions on electricity market reforms going to Cabinet as early as next Monday, such antipathy would appear to raise the likelihood Meridian will, at the very least, have to give some of its Waitaki hydro scheme assets to Genesis Energy in a highly public effort to force more competitive electricity retailing.
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