New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clarke announced New Zealand’s intention to commit to 90% renewable electricity by 2025.
The country already uses 70% renewable electricity, primarily hydro- and geothermal power and will continue to increase its use of renewables over the next 20 years.
The Prime Minister also gave a brief outline of further goals, which included a 2040 target of reducing by half per capita emissions from transport and widely introducing electric vehicles. She also stated the goal of achieving a net increase in forest area of 250,000 hectares (617,000 acres) by 2020.
This is the kind of news we need to be hearing more and more of from all over the world. That’s when we’ll know there is hope for our planet.
[Source: Renewable Energy Access]
[Via: EcoGeek]
Although commendable, it will be interesting to see how she plans to do it.
Hydro and geothermal power relies on the balance of elements to remain relatively constant.
Hydro electricity only works if there is water – and there have been times when the existing NZ hydro power schemes have been under threat from droughts in both summer and winter seasons.
Same with geothermal – extract too much energy out of a geothermal field and it starts to suffer, it can’t simply generate more power just because more is being taken out. In Rotorua city a few years ago, the local council passed a law and capped/plugged all the geothermal bores (being used by the land owners to heat their houses and water) that were on private properties, because the geothermal areas were dying and there was a threat to the geothermal tourism attractions. Some of the geysers stopped blowing and the average water temperatures had started to decrease.
Introduce electric cars, and you have to start producing more electricity to power them.
What’s left?
Hydrogen? Needs a lot of legislature in place to commit to this – they had better get going on it in order to succeed by 2025.
Wind? A good alternative – especially if they hook up the parliament chambers and use all the hot air that blows out of there most of the time!
Nuclear energy? Hardly, considering NZ’s long, long diehard anti-nuclear stance!
Committing to 90% renewable energy is a big risk. It depends on Mother Nature being kind enough to continue supplying steady resources.
A climatic change would be enough to put NZ back into the dark ages – literally!
Let’s see the plan of how this is all going to come about before we start cheering too loudly.
Thanks for the additional info and insight. It’ll be interesting to see how this plan will unfold and whether it’ll be entirely possible or not.
Still, I applaud the commitment and the will to actually try and get there. That’s missing in many other countries who could move forward on this issue.