Christopher Luxon, New Zealand Prime Minister 2023

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Forums › Politics › Christopher Luxon, New Zealand Prime Minister 2023

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#3460138 10-Feb-2026 09:58

SaltyNZ: Why would we spend that $1B on boring solar, wind and batteries when we could be watching a square kilometre of forestry slash sweep away Tairawhiti three times a year instead?

Would spending $1B on solar, wind and batteries actually solve the immediate problem they are trying to solve or is significantly more investment required?

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#3460143 10-Feb-2026 10:40

gzt:
Would spending $1B on solar, wind and batteries actually solve the immediate problem they are trying to solve or is significantly more investment required?

Quicker than the LNG terminal, yes. They estimate 2028 for the terminal. If they start building some of the fields already consented they can be generating within a year. But the government didn't even consider that:

Moreover, how the counterfactual is designed is also important. The Government compared the LNG scenario with four others, all designed to address dry year shortfalls. These were: New coal or biomass power plants; new and converted diesel-powered peakers; a combination of peakers, a new coal unit at Huntly and demand response; and LNG imports plus the refurbishment of the to-be-retired Taranaki Combined Cycle gas plant.

There seems to have been no substantive investigation of the potential for renewable overbuild to address dry-year and peaking issues by freeing up hydro storage.

In fact their own report said that gas should be the fuel of last resort. And apart from the gas companies, everyone's else's reaction was:

In-Depth's Kirsty Johnston in November reported the response from "almost every corner - other than the gas industry itself - was a collective groan", with sector commentators calling it a "band-aid" solution that "doesn't make logical sense".

Finally, even Nicola Willis says New Zealanders won't be happy with us spending billions on overseas carbon credits. But apparently she'd rather do that than spend those billions here, on verifiable projects that create jobs for New Zealanders while also solving the twin issues of lack of electricity and dependence on international imports of fossil fuels?

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#3460145 10-Feb-2026 10:45

This government is clearly too invested in "trickle down" to think about actual infrastructure.

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#3460147 10-Feb-2026 11:12

The Government compared the LNG scenario with four others, all designed to address dry year shortfalls. These were: New coal or biomass power plants; new and converted diesel-powered peakers; a combination of peakers, a new coal unit at Huntly and demand response; and LNG imports plus the refurbishment of the to-be-retired Taranaki Combined Cycle gas plant. There seems to have been no substantive investigation of the potential for renewable overbuild to address dry-year and peaking issues by freeing up hydro storage.

That's terrible. I think you'd have to go back way further than 20 years to see a process like that.

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#3460155 10-Feb-2026 12:04

freitasm:

They are planning on how to transfer funds to friends and supporters.

Don't all political party's / politician's do that (e.g Labour / Unions)? It just depends on which friend group you are in as to whether or not you think its a good idea or not.

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#3460157 10-Feb-2026 12:14

sen8or:

Don't all political party's / politician's do that (e.g Labour / Unions)? It just depends on which friend group you are in as to whether or not you think its a good idea or not.

I wouldn't say it was unheard of, exactly, but this lot are particularly blatant about it. Be that as it may the size of the friend group that thinks this is a good idea is a couple of cabinet ministers plus Shane Jones' mining industry/fancy dinner with Shane Jones Club mates.

edit: a typo, added cynicism

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#3460216 10-Feb-2026 14:22

sen8or:

freitasm:

They are planning on how to transfer funds to friends and supporters.

Don't all political party's / politician's do that (e.g Labour / Unions)? It just depends on which friend group you are in as to whether or not you think its a good idea or not.

Whataboutism doesn't help solve the problem. People accepting their preferred party choice is not acting in an ethical way while in power, would go a long way to help solving this.

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#3460225 10-Feb-2026 15:14

I think its more cynicism that whataboutism. They have all been caught up in various scandals, infighting, political posturing and scare-mongering. They are all pretty much as useless as each other, it just depends on which side of the divide you believe is less useless

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#3460305 10-Feb-2026 19:00

LNG

Hopefully its been considered.

There is a lot of competition for LNG, given EU demand to replace Russia, for Japan its a major energy source.
Countries decreasing Coal and other more polluting generation have also been ramping up on LNG/Gas.
Top importers China, South Korea, India

Quick way to get power for your Ai datacenter too.
Could end up competing with the DDR/GPU/CPU/Flash consuming monsters?
Gas Turbines are relatively quick to build, scalable, even down to Xai's row of turbine power packs

USA who was exporting LNG to help EU under previous administration seems to be capping exports for itself?
Specialist LNG shipping infrastructure to send to a small/tiny/miniscule customer last stop before Antarctica not without risk?

Its hot hot hot now, so hopefully we have friends with production that will ensure little guy gets some, if.

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#3460307 10-Feb-2026 19:14

ezbee:

Hopefully its been considered.

Oh, I'm sure it has. It's just that Labour ruined everything by reaching back in time twenty years to ensure there wasn't any more gas to be found in NZ and then using that as an excuse to ban looking for more in future. But poor Shane Jones was just begging for someone to take him to dinner, and those nice oil and gas companies came along and fed him some lobster to save his life, and, well, here we are.

We can't afford to fix our ferry terminals or build hospitals or houses because we had to give tax cuts to landlords so now we're just skimping by on $1B for an LNG terminal the government's own studies still rejected even though they explicitly didn't even consider renewables as an option and another $11B to buy planes and helicopters from Donald Trump so he doesn't slap a 10% tariff on us and the penguin place.

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#3460309 10-Feb-2026 19:38

Oh hey I stand corrected, apoarently

households would see a net benefit of about $50 per year

Totally worth it to accelerate the climate change driving the extreme weather events that are costing us billions every year now.

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#3460358 10-Feb-2026 20:26

SaltyNZ: Totally worth it to accelerate the climate change driving the extreme weather events that are costing us billions every year now.

About as useful as the tax break we all got but instead of borrowing $12bn for it, we're now borrowing from future generations.

Also when you're next in Wellington ensure you hit me up. We can go out to dinner without plotting to destroy NZ.

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#3460364 10-Feb-2026 20:54

freitasm:

Whataboutism doesn't help solve the problem. People accepting their preferred party choice is not acting in an ethical way while in power, would go a long way to help solving this.

100%. It's quite weird to see other countries where they demonise 'swing voters', like the people making a decision based on the information available at the time are the problem.

I could not imagine voting for the same party every single time just because, without giving any thought to actual performance or policy merits.

Unfortunately I think we're now at the point where people can live in self-reinforcing bubbles and a huge chunk of their personal identity comes from their political leanings and having people agree with them. "No one I know voted for X" is no longer that far away from "The election was stolen by Y".

Thankfully our options in NZ come from a pretty narrow political spectrum (Bill English was famously more left wing than Bernie Sanders) but if we're not careful, that won't always be the case.

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#3460370 10-Feb-2026 21:57

Bernard Hickey says the actual projected cost of the LNG scheme is $2.7B over 15 years because of the government's payment scheme:

https://thekaka.substack.com/p/why-not-spend-27b-on-solar-and-batteries

Looks like the original government announcement was somewhat simplified for broadcast.

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#3460374 10-Feb-2026 22:31

gzt: Looks like the original government announcement was somewhat simplified for broadcast.

Hanlon's razor: "Do not attribute to malice what can be explained with incompetence."

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