Opinion: Consensus is needed around design and management of our green infrastructure

New Zealand’s fragmented regulatory framework could jeopardise our renewable energy and emissions targets, says Boffa Miskell ecologist Dr Sarah Flynn.

While renewable energy sources produce the majority of New Zealand’s electricity, 60% of our total energy supply still comes from fossil fuels. In 2019, total energy use in New Zealand (including fuels burned to power vehicles, run industrial processes, heat buildings, in addition to electricity generation) produced 42% of New Zealand’s gross carbon dioxide emissions.

Low emission, renewable energy generation is a cornerstone of New Zealand’s climate change response. In climate change mitigation scenarios likely to limit global warming to 2°C and below, the transition of the energy sector to a low-carbon or carbon-zero state must be rapid. As the number of electric vehicles on New Zealand roads continues to increase, and move away from fossil fuels, renewable energy generation needs to rapidly expand to meet this increased demand.

The Government has committed to developing a national energy strategy to decarbonise the energy system, as recommended by the Climate Change Commission. Broad targets include 100% renewable electricity generation by 2035 and achieving a 70% increase in supply within the next 30 years, mostly from wind and solar generation.

The Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment is responsible for developing regulatory policy in the energy sector. However, we rely on private enterprise to identify commercial scale renewable energy opportunities in New Zealand, and to carry the risk of developing these projects. The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS)¹ is the primary driver of investment, rather than any sector-specific government support. The Resource Management Act (RMA) regulates development of renewable energy generation in the same way that it manages all resource use in New Zealand. Cost-benefit considerations are devolved to local authorities, and evaluations are undertaken on a project-by-project basis through environmental effects assessments as part of resource consent applications.

Renewable energy sources have a power density several orders of magnitude lower than fossil fuels, hence commercial-scale generation requires large areas of land, and that demand can put renewable energy in conflict with other uses and aspirations. Most of the adverse environmental effects of clean power occur locally, such as those associated with impervious surface coverage, habitat loss or disturbance, and impacts associated with the presence and operation of infrastructure in the landscape. In addition, potential ecological effects of infrastructure can be challenging to assess in the New Zealand context.

National and regional policies are increasingly stringent with respect to avoidance of ecological effects, while the outcome of introducing novel structures such as wind turbines into environments where threatened or at risk native fauna may interact with them is hard to predict in advance of development. In the case of terrestrial windfarms, several years of study to support consent applications, and well over a decade of industry-led post-consent monitoring, have provided a reliable risk profile for widespread and common New Zealand birds, but knowledge gaps remain for some rarer species. Offshore wind projects present a new frontier, with another decade of discovery before we can be confident in our assessments on the risk of turbines to our 86 species of seabird. Other sustainable energy projects, such as solar, may have other unanticipated impacts to be explored.

The RMA Amendment Act has removed statutory barriers to considering the effects of activities on climate change under the RMA. The acts that will reform the Resource Management framework, due to be passed by the end of 2022, will likely require that decisions give effect to (or at least are not contrary to the objectives of) the Emission Reduction Plan². In addition to this, section 5ZN in the Zero Carbon Act states that the 2050 targets and emission budgets are permissive considerations for public decision makers.

Nevertheless, renewable energy generation opportunities do not (thus far) generally feature in spatial planning, while the consenting process itself tends to emphasise site-specific impacts and effects. Possible negative impacts of projects are examined in detail through the consenting process, while broader environmental benefits may be treated as peripheral or irrelevant to effects assessment because they do not directly mitigate or offset identified adverse effects.

By the same token, the regulatory environment does not currently provide an effective framework to incorporate broader analyses of project tradeoffs with respect to climate change that ensure authentic progress towards lower net carbon emissions. There are numerous examples world-wide of perverse outcomes resulting from over-reliance on policy targets without project-scale evaluation of costs and benefits. For example, demand for biofuel has resulted in increased competition for food-producing land, water consumption, indirect emissions and biodiversity loss; while Europe’s Renewable Energy Directive threatens to increase net carbon emissions due to forests being cut down for ‘renewable’ wood-fired generators.

It is not a stretch to conclude that New Zealand’s regulatory framework could jeopardise our renewable energy and emissions targets.

While legislative and policy amendments will undoubtedly change the regulatory environment in due course, industry guidance is needed to provide a clear understanding of requirements and constraints of renewable generation in the New Zealand context to ensure policy expectations which seek to achieve the benefits of renewable generation, while minimising down-sides, are realistic.

For example, innovations that locate solar panels on buildings or make biofuel from process waste may have a very small environmental footprint, but have limited scalability. Dual-use solar and agricultural farming initiatives show promise in arid regions, but are not necessarily compatible with commercial scale generation in New Zealand due to topographical constraints. The design flexibility and relatively small scale of physical disturbance required for both wind and solar farms is a positive attribute, and there may be opportunities to deliver ecological or other benefits by way of avoiding habitat or creating enhancement opportunities through adaptations to the layout, height and density of wind turbines or solar arrays. Solar and wind farms are also left relatively undisturbed once constructed and are in place for decades, and hence can be a benign land use. However, seemingly minor constraints to the scale or layout of infrastructure also have the potential to substantially impact generation capacity and project viability.

In the 2021 infrastructure consenting review³, developers identified a lack of institutional knowledge within consenting authorities as a key constraint to project implementation. Renewable energy infrastructure development is an essential part of New Zealand’s strategy to address climate change, and local government is mandated to provide for it. Wind energy already contributes more than 5% of electricity generation, and approximately 30 wind farms with a capacity greater than 5 MW are operational, under construction, or currently proposed in New Zealand. Industry is actively exploring prospective large scale solar generation opportunities. Now is the time for proactive conversations between stakeholders from industry and regulatory agencies, including renewable energy engineers, ecologists, landscape architects and planners, to build a mutual understanding and consensus around practical, best practice design and management of New Zealand’s green infrastructure.

[1] Legislated for in the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Act 2020

[2] As required under the Climate Change Response Act 2002.

[3] Moore, D., J. Loan, S.Wyatt, K. Woock, S.Carrick, Z. Hartmann 2021:The cost of consenting infrastructure projects in New Zealand. Prepared by Sapere The New Zealand Infrastructure Commission / Te Waihanga, July 2021.

Find out more

Spatial Planning for New Zealand’s renewable energy future

For further information please contact Dr. Sarah Flynn, Stephen Fuller or Emma McRae