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The decision didn’t include the option of using that $2.7 billion up-front to pay for grid-scale, residential and commercial solar panel and battery capacity that would allow the lakes to remain full in a dry year. That amount would buy the equivalent of 2 Gigawatts worth of generation and storage, which is the equivalent of about four Benmore Dams worth and enough to power 2.5 million households for a year.

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Instead, the LNG terminal may never be used but will have to be paid for annually, and the benefits in the counterfactual put forward by the Government in its fact sheet are dependent on lower wholesale prices (than would otherwise be the case) being passed on by gentailers to consumers.

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Mike Casey said the Government couldn’t create cheap electricity with expensive fuel.“The Government is basically forcing New Zealanders to invest in an LNG terminal and hoping prices might go down eventually. You cannot make cheap electricity with expensive fuels and LNG is one of the most expensive fuels there is. We don’t like burning Indonesian coal. So why replace it with expensive Australian gas? This decision just locks us into another expensive overseas dependency.” Rewiring Aotearoa CEO Mike Casey via a statement

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