National’s obsession with doing whatever it can to increase the emissions of greenhouse gasses is becoming a real problem.
At the beginninng of this year, National came up with a bonkers idea.
In the midst of a climate crisis and faced with the need to ensure that during dry years there is sufficient power supply, it came up with the proposal that we should construct an LNG terminal at the cost of $2.7 billion.
I thought at the time that this idea was bonkers.
The cost of solar panels has recently been plummeting, and the rate of return for some systems is 16%.
Some Solar Panels pay for themselves after 6 years, and then you get free power for the rest of the panel’s life.
And in a dry year where the sun is shining, solar seemed to be by far the best solution to a power shortage, and it could also reduce the need to draw down water to power hydro stations.
So when it was first announced it was clear to me that the idea was idiotic.
Then the Iranian war started.
Donald Trump went all gung ho on it and decided to start bombing Iran, and ever since then the world has faced a fairly major fuel shock.
Somehow we have come through it relatively well, partially because alternative ways of moving the fuel around have occurred, partially because of a surge in electric vehicles and partially because China started letting its major fuel reserves be released, and partially because Western nations started to run down their fuel stocks in the hope that things would pick up.
But the event showed how fragile our supply system is, and showed why continued reliance on Middle Eastern oil and LNG is actually a rather stupid idea.
So I thought then that the LNG terminal proposal would be ditched.
Then after that, there was a further development: the Methanex fuel plant, which historically consumes up to 40% of the country’s produced LNG, announced it was going to shut down.
So for a short time at least, there would be plenty of LNG around and no need to import it.
So I thought then that the proposal for the Terminal was even more bonkers and made even less sense than it did before.
And so I’ve been....
