New Zealand's Energy Outlook to 2030
"New Zealand's Energy Outlook to 2030", NZ Ministry of Economic Development, 2006 (PDF).
Section 2.2.1 Electricity (p.20)
Constraints imposed by environmental considerations particularly the resource consent process, are having an impact on the development of the electricity sector.
Section 3.2 Energy Supply (p.28 & 30)
Wind supply grows by a factor of ten, reflecting the cost of wind technology in NZ. The growth of wind energy is limited only by the availability of suitable sites.
Section 8.1.5 Wind (p.98 & 99)
Wind does have an impact on the environment, including noise, visual impacts, and bird strikes, although many of these problems can be mitigated with proper design.
East Harbour Management estimated up to 2450 MW of wind generation could be installed with high confidence and 4585 MW of wind generation could be installed with high or medium confidence by 2015.
The main limitation of wind generation is that electricity can only be produced when the wind is blowing. Wind generators generally operate at only 20-50% load factors. For wind to make up a significant share of electricity generation, it would have to be carefully integrated with other forms of generation and wind generators would have to be widely dispersed around the country.
Section 8.3 Sensitivity Case: Renewable Electricity (p.104)
There might also be electricity security issues with a system so dependent on hydro and wind both of which are subject to considerable natural variation.
Section 8.4 Sensitivity Case: Additional Renewable Electricity (p. 106)
If resource consenting issues are the primary impediment to low-cost renewable electricity, and if there are legitimate environmental concerns behind these resource consenting issues, then there may be significant trade-offs between local environmental impacts and the global impacts of climate change.
Section 11.4 The Way Forward (p.145)
The renewable scenario may not be able to provide the level of electricity reliability NZ requires. A modest level of thermal generation [...] would solve this problem.
