Clean electricity is fine in theory, but making it reality means leaping a few bureaucratic hurdles
KEY POINTS:
In politics, a year is an eternity. But in the quest for cleaner sources of energy, it's the blink of an eye. The paradoxical part is that the two things are closely bound up.
Politicians on one level profess eagerness for alternatives that will put the brakes on climate change. On another, they govern the process that applicants seeking approval for alternative energy projects need to go through.
It's been not one year, but three since Auckland company Crest Energy set out on the twisting path to a resource consent hearing for a plan to put 200 turbines on the bottom of the Kaipara Harbour, northwest of Auckland, where they would convert tidal energy into electricity.
But there has been one delay after another in the setting of a hearing date by the Northland Regional Council (NRC) to which Crest has applied for resource consent. Finally, however, an end is in sight.
The council has notified Crest and interested parties that a hearing will begin on May 26 in Whangarei. That will be a relief for Nick Eady, a Crest co-founder and director, and the 10 or so other Crest staff and consultants who are waiting to start building their power station.
Eady accepts that Crest has to go through the consent process but, on the touchy subject of the Resource Management Act, he can't keep the frustration out of his voice.
The RMA "hamstrings" New Zealand, he reckons, when for a small fee anyone can appeal a resource consent in the Environment Court.
Needless to say, Crest is hoping to stay out of court. However, the consent hearing is just the first of a couple of big hurdles ahead. If the commissioners - two NRC councillors and a Department of Conservation appointee - grant the consent, it then needs the stamp of approval of the Minister of Conservation.
If the minister upholds the consent, objectors then have a month in which to lodge an appeal in the Environment Court.
The process is made all the more tortuous because Crest's plan is a restricted coastal activity. It has certainly attracted plenty of attention - about 250 submissions have been received since the application was notified.
In response, Crest has modified its plans. It will now install the 200 16m-diameter turbines in four phases and they'll be located at least 10m below the water surface.
Once all 200 turbines are in place, Crest estimates they will generate a maximum of 200MW of power - more than enough for Northland - when the Kaipara tidal flow is at its 9km/h peak.
Another detail yet to be worked out is how much Crest will have to pay the Crown as rent for use of the seabed.
Eady is itching to get on with the project, believing there is an opportunity to export Crest's expertise to Pacific Island nations whose only existing source of power is diesel generation.
While Crest is pressing its case in Whangarei for resource consent, the lobby group for New Zealand's tiny marine energy industry, Awatea, will be discussing how to overcome the obstacles to getting turbines into the water at its annual conference in Wellington on May 29.
John Huckerby, executive officer of Awatea (it stands for Aotearoa Water and Tidal Energy Association), says it "would be nice" if the consent process was faster, but it was a fact of life for all big projects. Marine energy projects in particular were complicated.
However, not all are stalled. Christchurch company Neptune Power got the good news last month from the Greater Wellington Regional Council that it could install a trial turbine in Cook Strait.
Its resource consent application was non-notified, so required no hearing but, initially at least, is for a much smaller project. The consent is for a single experimental turbine in 80m of water 4.5km off Wellington's south coast.
Depending on how the trial goes, it could be the first of hundreds of turbines in the strait. Neptune director Chris Bathurst reckons there's enough energy down there to generate as much as 12GW of power - 1.5 times New Zealand's total capacity.
But not just yet. The Neptune trial will study turbine effects on marine life and the general seabed ecology. Then there's the small matter of funding.
Huckerby, though, can see marine energy flowing into the national grid before long. "The general view is marine energy is a couple of years away from being a commercial thing."
Energy Minister David Parker can't personally hand out those precious resource consents. But he is expected to help turbine deployment along with an announcement at the Awatea conference of the first recipients of cash from the Government's $8 million Marine Energy Deployment Fund.
Anthony Doesburg is an Auckland-based technology journalist
