Coalition critical of Energy Plan

Press, 1 September 1982, Page 2

Coalition critical of Energy Plan

Parliamentary reporter . The 1982 Energy Plan provided no evidence to justify the Government’s statements that electricity from a high dam at Clyde was heeded, said the Coalition for Open Government yesterday. Speaking for the anti-dam lobby group, Mr K. Johnston said that figures in the plan showed that electricity from Clyde was not needed. The language of the Energy Plan carefully avoided drawing any conclusions and the Minister of Energy, Mr Birch, had tried to say that the Energy Plan showed just the opposite — that a high dam at Clyde was needed, Mr Johnston said. Mr Birch had made repeated statements that electricity was needed, but Mr Birch had no evidence to justify them. Mr Johnston said that the Energy Plan showed that the high dam would spill 40 per cent of its potential generating capacity in the first 10 years. He rebutted what he called “three misleading argu-

ments" used by Mr Birch: e It was normal to build more power stations than were needed. This was not so, Mr Johnston said. Any electricity not needed in the South Island had in the past been sent north via the Cook Strait cable. The Clyde dam would break this rule by creating far more electricity than could be sent by the cable. • There was an enormous growth in “natural demand” in the South Island, where growth rates had almost doubled since the 1981 Energy Plan. This was misleading, Mr Johnston said. The rise in demand, from 1.8 per cent to 3.8 per cent, was only in one year and might not continue. Even if it did, the additional growth did not require a high dam at Clyde. • There had to be a change in the calculations about the cost of the electricity system. Mr Johnston said that this was a blatant case of changing the facts to suit political needs. By halving the discount rate, which the Minister himself had de-

fended resolutely only two weeks ago, another Cook Strait cable could be made to look economic. The South Island hydro construction programme could be made to look necessary, and a lower price to a second aluminium smelter could be argued for. The Energy Plan needed to be treated with considerable scepticism, said the Labour spokesman on energy, Mr D. F. Caygill. The forecasts of demand for energy on which the Energy Plan was based were notoriously , inaccurate, he said. Their worst feature was their tendency to base .longterm forecasts on “trends" of only a single year. This year the figures were doubly suspect. They seemed to confirm the Government’s assertion that power would be needed from the Clyde dam even without a second aluminium smelter. That seemed altogether too convenient, Mr Caygill said. It also raised questions about what would happen if the second smelter did proceed.