ERIC NESS: THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY WAS DECLARED — NOW SHOW US THE BILL

In 2019, tens of thousands of New Zealand schoolchildren marched over climate change. Climate Change Minister James Shaw told Parliament that the Government was acting to safeguard the future those students would inherit. He described the consequences of allowing global temperatures to rise more than 1.5 degrees as “catastrophic” and said New Zealand needed to do everything it could over the following 30 years to limit warming.

An entire generation has grown up hearing words like climate emergency, climate crisis, catastrophe, irreversible damage and rapidly closing windows of opportunity. Those words did not stay in protest banners or speeches. They became part of government policy and part of the justification for spending billions of dollars changing the way New Zealand produces and uses energy.

But the international climate scenarios have moved on.

The World Climate Research Programme has now developed the next generation of scenarios used in global climate modelling. It says the upper end of plausible increases in fossil-fuel use is lower than in the previous generation of scenarios. Its preliminary high scenario produces around 3.5°C of warming by 2100, while still recognising that higher warming remains possible because there is uncertainty in the climate system.

At the other end, WCRP now says there are no plausible scenarios that remain below 1.5°C throughout this century. Even the lowest pathway involves an overshoot before temperatures potentially move back towards that level later.

That does not mean climate change has disappeared. It has not. It does mean the modelling has changed as technology, energy markets and actual emissions have changed.

Policy should be capable of changing too.

So here is the question New Zealand should now be asking: Did we take a genuine long-term environmental problem, model some very severe outcomes, and then turn precaution into an increasingly absolute energy policy before proving that the replacement system could deliver reliable energy at a price people could actually afford?

That question becomes especially relevant when looking back at James Shaw's time as Climate Change Minister.

Treasury documents released under the Official Information Act record officials looking back at the development of the National Adaptation Plan. Treasury said it appeared the Ministry for the Environment and Minister Shaw had made a late change suggesting councils should use only RCP8.5 for planning purposes.

Treasury was clearly uneasy about that. Officials raised concerns about the implications and recommended using multiple scenarios instead. Cabinet eventually settled on using both RCP4.5 and RCP8.5.

That matters because RCP8.5 was the very high-emissions scenario. There is nothing wrong with using a worst-case scenario to stress-test risk. But there is a big difference between asking what happens if the worst case occurs and building policy as though the worst case is the likely future.

Those scenarios can influence coastal planning, infrastructure, land use, property decisions and public spending. They are not just lines on a graph.

At the same time, the Labour-led Government, with James Shaw as Climate Change Minister and the Greens involved through their cooperation arrangements, was already committing billions to the transition.

The Climate Emergency Response Fund began with $4.5 billion. Treasury itself described that as a “down payment” on climate spending and acknowledged more money would be needed.

The Government expanded industrial decarbonisation programmes designed to move businesses away from coal and gas. It subsidised conversions to electricity and other lower-emissions alternatives. It pushed harder on electrification.

Then came the Clean Car Discount.

By the time it ended, $617.2 million had been paid in vehicle rebates. Total programme expenditure reached about $634.5 million. Fees on higher-emitting vehicles provided $297.4 million, while $337.1 million came from Crown funding. Around 192,100 rebates were paid.

That certainly helped put more electric vehicles on the road.

But buying the car is the easy part.

Charging millions of them is where the argument becomes much more serious.

New Zealand already has a highly renewable electricity system, and that is an enormous advantage. But highly renewable does not mean unlimited. Hydro still depends on water. Wind depends on wind. Solar disappears every night. Batteries can store electricity, but they do not create it.

That is why Huntly still matters.

When New Zealand ran into difficult hydro and gas conditions in 2024, coal use at Huntly rose sharply. Ministry for the Environment figures obtained from Genesis show Huntly used about 870,446 tonnes of coal in 2024, and around 85 percent of it was imported from Indonesia.

Then imports rose again in 2025. MBIE says coal imports increased another 29 percent, helping push Huntly's stockpile to 1.16 million tonnes by the end of 2025, its highest level since March 2012.

There is something rather telling about that.

After years of talk about reducing fossil-fuel dependence, the physical electricity system made sure there was more than a million tonnes of coal sitting beside Huntly in case New Zealand needed it.

The power system does not care about political ambition. When demand rises and renewable supply falls short, something has to fill the gap.

Then there is Marsden Point.

New Zealand's only oil refinery stopped refining in March 2022 after shareholders decided to convert it into an import terminal. It was a commercial decision, not a ministerial shutdown. Larger Asian refineries, low refining margins and the Covid collapse in aviation demand all played a part.

But the result for New Zealand was simple enough.

Before closure, Marsden Point supplied around 65 to 70 percent of New Zealand's refined fuel demand. Once it closed, New Zealand became dependent on imported petrol, diesel and aviation fuel.

Our need for petroleum did not disappear.

The refining just happened somewhere else.

That distinction is important because domestic emissions can fall when production moves offshore, while the actual global demand for the product remains.

There may have been sound commercial reasons for importing fuel rather than refining it here. But that is exactly why climate policy should not be judged only by whether emissions disappear from New Zealand's own ledger.

Security of supply matters. Domestic capability matters. Cost matters. So does resilience.

And now we get to Chlöe Swarbrick.

Anyone expecting the present Green Party to look back at the first stage of the transition and decide New Zealand should slow down while the electricity system catches up is going to be disappointed.

Chlöe wants to go further.

In her 2026 Budget speech she said: “We get it when we electrify everything.”

Everything is a pretty big word when you are talking about a country's energy system.

Cars, home heating, hot water, industry, parts of commercial transport and other processes currently powered directly by petrol, diesel or gas would all move further onto the electricity network.

At the same time, the Greens want to accelerate the move away from fossil fuels.

There is nothing wrong with electrification in itself. In many cases it is more efficient than combustion, and New Zealand has renewable resources that most countries would envy.

But that is not really the question.

The question is whether generation, storage and the electricity network can grow fast enough to keep up with all the extra demand being pushed onto them.

MBIE has already modelled how large that change could be. Its electricity scenarios show total demand growing by between 35.3 percent and 82 percent by 2050. The reference scenario reaches 62.1 TWh a year. The highest reaches 72.1 TWh. Transport electrification becomes a much bigger part of the picture as EV numbers rise.

Peak demand is also expected to climb substantially.

That means new generating stations, more wind, more geothermal, more solar, more transmission, more substations, stronger local lines networks, more transformers and a lot more firm capacity for the days when renewable generation does not deliver enough.

And none of that is cheap.

The Greens know there is a reliability problem. Their answer is Kiwipower, a new publicly owned electricity entity intended to invest in renewable generation and obtain the firming capacity needed when hydro, wind and solar are not enough.

Chlöe says Kiwipower can help sort out New Zealand's dry-year problem.

That is a very big promise.

The Greens' published package puts about $980 million into Kiwipower over four years. Then there is around $970 million for an expanded Warmer Kiwi Homes programme, about $429 million for zero-interest clean-energy loans, about $460 million for solar on public housing, $200 million for community renewable projects and $80 million for renewable energy for Māori housing.

All up, about $3.1 billion over four years.

But that still is not the real cost of electrifying New Zealand.

It is the cost of the programmes the Greens have chosen to put numbers beside.

It does not include the full cost of building the extra generation New Zealand may need. It does not include all of the Transpower work, all of the local lines upgrades, all of the transformers, millions of chargers, or the cost of replacing millions of petrol and diesel vehicles.

It also does not tell us exactly how much reliable, long-duration energy will be needed when New Zealand hits another prolonged dry period.

One of Chlöe's own lines is probably the best test of all this.

She said: “Hope is not a plan.”

Quite right.

So where is the complete plan?

Not the campaign announcement. Not the promise that renewables will be cheaper. Not another target.

The actual national energy plan.

How much more electricity will we need? How much new generation has to be built? How much firm capacity do we need in a dry year? How much storage? How much transmission? How much work has to be done on local lines networks? What happens when millions of EVs are charging? And what happens if the replacement system is not ready when the old one is being pushed out?

Chlöe also said: “Gas belongs in a museum.”

It is a memorable line.

The problem is that the electricity system still has to work at 6pm on a cold winter night whether the slogan is memorable or not.

Gas and coal have been part of the backup that keeps the system running when renewable generation falls short. The question is not whether New Zealand should depend on them forever. The question is what replaces them, how quickly that replacement can be built and what happens in the meantime.

That is where sequencing matters.

The danger was never renewable energy. The danger was taking one objective — emissions reduction — and allowing it to override cost, resilience, energy security and sequencing.

Renewable energy should be able to stand up to scrutiny. If it is the best long-term option, then the numbers should prove it.

The same goes for electric vehicles. They are efficient, they will probably become a much larger part of the fleet, and they may make a lot of sense for many people.

But they still need electricity.

Moving millions of cars from petrol stations to wall sockets does not make their energy requirement disappear. It shifts that demand onto an electricity system that has to be built to carry it.

And that brings us back to James Shaw.

New Zealand began this transition under the language of emergency, catastrophe and rapidly closing windows. Billions followed. Oil and gas policy changed. Industry was subsidised to move away from fossil fuels. EVs were subsidised. Climate scenarios became part of planning decisions.

Now the scenarios have evolved.

But Chlöe Swarbrick is not proposing a pause to ask whether the first stage was properly sequenced.

She wants to accelerate.

Electrify everything. Move gas towards the museum. Build Kiwipower. Spend another $3.1 billion on the programmes announced so far, then build the much bigger electricity system needed to carry all that extra demand.

Maybe New Zealand can do it. Maybe there are real economic gains in doing it.

But before another generation is committed to the cost, there should be a much more basic test.

Did New Zealand take a genuine long-term environmental problem, model some very severe outcomes, and then convert precaution into an increasingly absolute energy policy without first proving that the replacement system could deliver the required energy security at an acceptable cost?

That question is not answered by saying climate change is real.

It is not answered by saying renewables are cheaper.

And it is not answered by saying everything will be electrified.

It is answered with engineering, timeframes and money.

Chlöe says hope is not a plan. Fair enough. Then show us the actual one — how much power we need, where it comes from, what replaces Huntly in a dry year, how millions of EVs are charged, how much the grid costs to upgrade and who eventually pays the bill.

Announcing an energy transition is the easy part.

Building the replacement before dismantling the old system is where it gets difficult.

Eric Ness is the pen name of a Northland-based writer behind Northland Current News, an independent commentary page focused on local government, public accountability and democratic process. Northland Current News examines council decisions, governance structures, public spending and the way decisions are made, with particular attention to whether the public is being given the full picture. The articles draw heavily on council agendas, minutes, official correspondence, meeting recordings and other publicly available material.