Quotes of the Day

All over new zealand, people are fighting the power. At Marsden Point, near Whangarei, Greenpeace activists held a sit-in atop a disused power station last month to protest plans to restart the plant and run it on coal. On the Gowan river, near Marlborough, kayakers turned a March 5 whitewater festival into a demonstration against a hydroelectricity project. In the Waikato, south of Auckland, furious farmers last week burned in effigy the boss of a company that wants to run a power line through their green acres on pylons 70 m high. Bring electricity infrastructure too close to a Kiwi, it seems, and he's likely to blow a fuse.

Yet there are few things the country needs more urgently. New Zealand's Maui gas field, discovered in the 1970s, provides one-third of the country's power and tops up hydro shortfalls when rivers are low. But within three to five years the gas will be gone. Meanwhile, a growing economy is gobbling up power - 2.5% more of it each year - and making the national grid feel its age. Power lines into Auckland, where almost one-third of New Zealanders now live, can barely handle peak loads. At a national electricity summit two weeks ago, industry leaders warned that if action isn't taken soon, supplies could run short or the grid give way within five years. "We don't have much reserve margin," says Alex Sundakov, of energy consultancy Castalia. "We are flying by the seat of our pants, really."

It's not that Kiwis don't grasp the problem. A recent survey by power company Contact Energy found that "overwhelmingly people value security of supply ahead of price or environmental concerns," says chief executive Stephen Barrett. New Zealand has plenty of options for ensuring that security: rushing rivers for hydroelectricity, rich coal reserves that, thanks to the gas windfall, have hardly been touched. But for almost every option there are opponents, sometimes very angry ones. And the delay-plagued process for vetting resource developments makes it easy for the noisy to get their way. "Small numbers of people, who may not even be affected, can lock things up indefinitely," says power industry consultant Bryan Leyland.

Hydro power schemes generate 60% of the country's electricity. Why not build more? Meridian Energy knows. Last year it abandoned a $NZ1.2 billion, 500-megawatt project on the South Island's Waitaki river, saying it was not sure it would get the necessary environmental consents or water rights. New Zealand needs a new power project of that size every three years, says Leyland. But even small hydro schemes like the one on the Gowan river, or another on the nearby Wairau, raise hackles. "A lot of rivers will potentially be ruined," says Lawson Davey, of the Save the Wairau Committee. "And will small schemes be able to supply enough electricity?" Green Party leader Jeanette Fitzsimons agrees "there's a lot of urgency" to plan for future power needs. But her party opposes more hydro: "While it's nice and clean from a greenhouse perspective, we don't want all our wild rivers dammed or put into canals."

How about coal - of which the country has enough, experts say, to match the output of 50 Maui gas fields? When dwindling gas flows forced the country's largest power station, at Huntly, to switch to coal last year, there were noisy protests. Once the old station at Marsden Point is modernized, it will be the cleanest coal-fired plant in Australasia, says its owner, Mighty River Power. But that doesn't impress critics, who say getting electricity from coal is a betrayal of New Zealand's Kyoto Protocol obligations. "It's a backward step for us to start using coal," says Fitzsimons. Wherever the power comes from, experts say it won't go anywhere unless the national grid is upgraded - and soon. "I agree it's vital that Auckland has a secure power supply," says Russell Alexander, who runs Hobbiton, a Lord of the Rings film set turned tourist attraction 100 km south of the city. But he doesn't see why the lines carrying that power should run on giant pylons past his and his neighbors' doors. "It's a beautiful place here. We don't want to spoil it," he says. "Surely there are other options." "Everyone agrees new power projects are needed," observes Chris de Freitas, a climate-change geographer at Auckland University. "But they don't want them in their backyard." At the recent power summit, Meridian chief executive Keith Turner called on New Zealanders to "stop ruling everything out and start ruling some things in." "You can oppose a hydro station, you can oppose a coal station, you can oppose a wind farm," he says. "You can oppose a transmission line. But hey, we've got to make sure something is done. Local and minority opposition should not control the destiny of the majority."

Switching off further power options is the government's support for Kyoto, which commits New Zealand to reducing its use of fossil fuels. The government wants most new power to come from renewable energy sources. Since hydro schemes of any size are out, that largely means wind. New Zealand has five wind farms and more are on the way. Though a proposed farm near Auckland was refused a resource consent last year, most are well accepted. Wind, which currently supplies just 1% of the country's electricity, "will help to a degree," says consultant Leyland, but it won't solve the problem.

Sundakov agrees. "People think of wind as this wonderful, entirely renewable resource. But it's unreliable and inefficient. For wind to work in a modern, integrated grid, it has to be backed up with a lot of thermal capacity, and that means gas or coal."

If no sizeable gas reserve is found, says Leyland, New Zealand "will be burning lots of coal" or importing liquefied natural gas. While it dreams of a clean-energy future, the country is using more and more fossil fuel. Use of energy from renewable sources rose 6% in the 1990s; energy use from oil, gas and coal increased 54%. With greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector growing at 2.5% a year, says climate specialist de Freitas, "New Zealand has no chance of meeting its Kyoto commitment." To reduce emissions to 1990 levels by 2012, he says, "we would have to reduce energy use by one-third." All Kyoto will do, he says, is make coal and gas - the best options for reliable large-scale power production - more costly by imposing a carbon tax. This will be phased in from 2007 and, concedes Energy Minister Trevor Mallard, will "have an upwards effect on electricity prices." "On the one hand New Zealand has these strong environmental ideologies," de Freitas says, "and on the other hand there's the business and economic imperative. We seem to deal with them almost separately."

Seeking a solution that doesn't involve dammed rivers or accursed carbon, some Kiwis are starting to whisper a blasphemous word: nuclear. Labour, which 20 years ago ditched the country's alliance with the U.S. rather than allow nuclear-powered ships in its ports, "is committed to New Zealand being a nuclear-free zone," Mallard says. But Leyland believes "there's much more public sympathy for nuclear power than most people believe." At the electricity summit, a snap poll of 200 industry reps found half thought the country should consider nuclear power; a handful said it definitely shouldn't. Energy Minister Mallard stood firm. "Don't bother trying that one," he told the meeting. "Don't go there. Let's get on with things that are likely to be acceptable to New Zealanders."

• Elizabeth Feizkhah
• New Zealanders urgently need new power sources, but everything on offer seems to be a turn-off