Retrospective on Eileen Mazzochette ,“Fueling the Future of New Zealand’s Electricity” from New Zealand: New Challenges in Paradise PerspecƟves on Business and Economics, Volume 27, 2009 Eileen MazzocheƩe ’09 is now a HapƟc Hardware Engineer at Apple. How much progress has New Zealand made toward its goal of generating 90% of the country’s electricity from renewable resources by 2025? Since 2009, New Zealand has made substanƟal progress with its country-wide goal toward electricity generaƟon through renewable resources. In 2011, renewably generated electricity was already at 79.96% and by 2020 it had risen to 80.78% (Granwal, 2021). AddiƟonally, New Zealand has been growing its geothermal generaƟon. SƟll, two things constrain its expansion: limited access to resources and half of the country’s sources being parƟally or fully protected. However, “There is now a more posiƟve mood in the industry following the government seƫng objecƟves for greatly reduced GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions by 2050” (Lawless et al., 2020), which should help with some of the regulatory constraints regarding future projects. The Kiwis also established a Smart Grid forum in 2014. The purpose of this forum is to allow businesses and agencies to share informaƟon and knowledge, hold discussion panels, and host workshops about renewable projects. Per the author’s suggestion, has New Zealand diversiϐied its energy generation sources to combat water and wind shortages? A substanƟal amount of New Zealand’s energy is generated via hydropower making the country sƟll highly reliant on the method. In 2021, a series of dry spells caused New Zealand’s water sources to drop significantly, which resulted in hydropower producƟon also dropping. “When hydropower levels began falling, New Zealand resorted to coal to fill the gap in energy supply. Last year, the country‘s coal imports were more than double the average of the previous decade” (Wright, 2021). In addiƟon, during the same year, New Zealand also suffered a major power outage due to a winter storm disrupƟng the wind farms. “The outages occurred as record demand coincided with insufficient generaƟon, which resulted in the need to reduce demand to maintain system security” (Withers, 2021) and leŌ thousands without power. While the Kiwis have since managed to rebound from their renewable slip, leaders are unsure of how to combat these issues should they occur again. This lack of diversificaƟon—resulƟng in having to fall back on nonrenewable sources in the absence of renewable consistency—could provide a serious obstacle to New Zealand’s 2025 goal. References Granwal, L. (2021, July 14). New Zealand: Renewable energy generaƟon share 2020. StaƟsta. Lawless, J., van Campen, B., & Randle, J. (2020, March). Future geothermal generaƟon stack: A report for the Ministry of Business, InnovaƟon and Employment, revision D. Ministry of Business, InnovaƟon and Employment. Withers, T. (2021, August 9). Sudden New Zealand power outage raises supply concerns. Bloomberg Green. Wright, S. (2021, August 4). New Zealand's renewable-energy dreams get a reality check. The Wall Street Journal. RetrospecƟve by Sidney Jankanish ’23, PoliƟcal Science and InternaƟonal RelaƟons Martindale Retrospectives 5 November 2021
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