Most of New Zealand’s Pacific neighbours should move close to achieving 50 per cent of their electricity from renewable means as a result of the two-day Pacific Energy Summit being hosted in Auckland jointly by New Zealand and the European Union next week.
Currently most Pacific countries deliver well under 10 per cent of their electricity renewably, with an overriding dependence on diesel generation. Conference co-host Foreign Minister Murray McCully says next week’s conference is “an attempt to put Pacific leaders and their energy roadmaps in the same room as major donors, with the goal of committing several hundred millions of dollars in new infrastructure”.
“What we are attempting is at the very ambitious end of the scale. But the goal of substantially reducing the dependence of Pacific countries on imported diesel for electricity makes this worth a serious effort,” Mr McCully says.
“Despite years of rhetoric about climate change, Pacific nations have had too little practical assistance to make the most significant available improvement to both their environmental and economic circumstances: a shift from extremely expensive imported diesel to environmentally friendly renewable sources of electricity. In a region that possesses sunshine and wind in abundance, that is simply not good enough.
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